Night Walker

Rating:  PG - A little profanity and several rather gruesome scenes.

Disclaimer:  The characters and vision of Farscape belong to Henson Co., and the Sci-Fi Channel.  The idea for this story belonged to a bard who lived and died generations before any of the rest of us poor mortals were even a glimmer in our grandparents’ imagination, and I hope he isn’t turning in the grave as I smush the two stolen creations together and hopefully create a little non-profit entertainment in the process.

Spoilers/Time Frame:  This story takes place right after “Self-Inflicted Wounds”, and contains substantial spoilers for that two-part episode.

Night Walker

Part 1

His name was Eomenri, he was five cycles old, and his destiny was assured.  He was accustomed to being called Menri, but he had reached the Age of Determination and his mother had told him that he would have to get used to being called by his full name now.  He hurried down the path that ran along the edge of the fields, knowing that he was late, but reveling in the newly bestowed privilege of making the trip from the common market to his home in the village by himself.  He was hurrying, but he wasn’t hurrying too fast because then his solitary journey would end too soon.

Menri slowed a little, giving his feet more time to travel the path undirected while he examined his hand.  He was five.  He held his hand up and curled both thumbs against his palm, examining the remaining fingers.  That was five.  He had been to the Center for the testing and the tall men had told his parents that he had inherited the genes that made so many of his relatives brilliant healers.  He would be a healer, too.  It was assured.  Menri unfolded his a-thumb and looked at his hand again.  ‘Anterior thumb’, his cousin had taught him.  His first new word from his life’s new purpose.  Menri mouthed the phrase silently.

Anterior thumb plus five fingers was six, and that was when he would begin his schooling as another of his planet’s healers.

He stumbled over a rock that had remained hidden in the gloom.  Black eyes looked up in dismay to find that the sun was setting, casting long shadows across his route in order to deliver the message that he was much later than he thought.  His name was Eomenri, he was going to be too late to see his father’s nephew again, and five cycles was too old to cry.  He began to run in the hope that he might get home in time to see his cousin before he left.  His cousin was an Aleph, a member of the most highly talented and skilled healers on the planet, possibly in the entire universe.  Menri had been told that he might be an Aleph some day, if he worked hard, and he wanted to share that distinction with his cousin before he returned to his posting.

He reached the fork in the path.  He’d been told repeatedly that he must never take the left turning after dark, but it was so much shorter to go along the lake, and he was late.  He looked at the sliver of sun still showing above the horizon, hesitated, and turned left, reasoning that it was still daytime.  He would run quickly so that he would be through the marshes and past the lake before the sun set completely -- before it was night and he was breaking the rules.

His name was Eomenri, and as he hurried through the darkening twilight, he had no idea that his destiny was already stalking him.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A small noise woke her.  Aeryn Sun lay motionless, listening to the rumbles and thumps of the Leviathan around her, trying to sort out the noise that had brought her out of a sound sleep.  She waited, breathing shallowly, alert to anything out of the ordinary that would explain why her perpetual internal alarm system had gone off.  It was a remnant of her Peacekeeper training that occasionally caused a poor night’s sleep, but one she would not have willingly given up under any circumstances.  Her ‘early warning system’, as Crichton called it, had served her too well during the past few cycles.

Her momentary consideration of Crichton’s term triggered something in her subconscious, giving her the answer she was seeking.  Aeryn slid out of bed and moved silently to the door of her cell.  A cautious peek laterally down the corridor confirmed that Crichton’s door was open.  That was the sound that had brought her out of her slumber.  The doors to her own cell slid open with the same sibilant metallic grinding she’d heard microts earlier, producing more noise than her own whispering passage on bare feet as she went to check his chamber.

“Frell!”  The expletive burst out before she could consider the others sleeping nearby.  She swept a glance around his empty room, noting the leather pants in a crumpled heap on top of his boots, and his pulse pistol safely stowed in the holster that hung from a hook in the corner.

“Aeryn?  Is something wrong?”  Chiana stumbled toward her wrapped in a shaggy robe that looked like the pelt of some primitive beast, except that it was bright orange.

Aeryn blinked several times, struggling to look toward the iridescent color and having trouble getting her eyes to adjust so early in the morning.  She shook her head, not sure herself whether the gesture was a response to Chiana’s question or an effort to relieve the optical discomfort being caused by the orange wrap.

“Everything’s fine except Crichton’s wandering around again.”  She gestured at the abandoned cell.  “At least he isn’t fully dressed.  He may settle down tonight.”

Chiana stepped forward to peer in, black eyes reviewing what Aeryn had already discovered.  “Do you want any help or anything?” she yawned.

Aeryn looked at the blurry gaze beneath white hair standing in disarray, and shook her head again.  “We can’t keep chasing him around trying to get him to sleep.  We’re all getting exhausted.  Go back to bed.  That’s what I’m going to do.”  She strode back to her chamber, using sound instead of sight to make sure that Chiana returned to her own cell.

Aeryn waited until the doors down the corridor slid closed, then pulled her pants on and went in search of John.  He’d been sleeping poorly ever since they’d managed to separate Moya from the Pathfinder ship, his misplaced sense of guilt driving him into the corridors night after night.  Sometimes he’d get dressed and badger Pilot into finding him some minor maintenance task to complete, but most nights he would just wander endlessly through the tiers, returning to his bed one or two arns before the end of the Leviathan’s night cycle.

Aeryn found him in the Center Chamber picking at some cold fried melvak beans, idly rearranging the green vegetables on his plate as he ate gaps into his previous pattern.  He looked up when she entered, a flicker of annoyance passing over his face before he could get a more benign expression in place.  He answered the question she’d asked the last three nights in a row before she could ask it again.  “I’ll go back to bed in a bit, Aeryn.  You don’t need to watch over me.”

“John.”  She searched for something new to say, a new approach to his stubborn reticence, but there wasn’t anything that hadn’t been said before.  “You have to move on.  You have got to get over this.”  She wanted to say more, but he turned his head away from her, staring into a corner with his most obstinate expression on his face.  “John,” she tried to draw him back.

He looked down at his latest bean design, flicked it into chaos, and shoved the plate away.  “We’re almost out of food,” he changed the subject.  “We’re down to one day’s supply of real food, then we have about three days of dried food cubes.  After that it’s fried dentics.”  He smiled at her, trying to add more humor into his weak joke, but it was obviously a strain.

“We can talk to Pilot in the morning.  Get some sleep.”  Aeryn started out of the chamber, waiting at the door for him to join her.  She gave him a small inclination of her head, beckoning for him to follow her back to Quarters.  John got up, stretched, and followed her silently through the corridors.

He sauntered willingly into his cell and collapsed onto his bed as the quiet muttering of Aeryn’s bare feet headed toward her own chamber.  He waited until he heard her doors close before getting back up.  He pulled on his pants and socks, picked up his boots, and crept quietly out of his room, waiting until he was on another tier before pulling on his boots.  He was never sure just how far Aeryn’s acute hearing could detect his footsteps.

It was too close to Moya’s version of morning to get any sleep, he decided.  It took arns of wandering up and down the tiers to tire himself to the point that his body would sink into unconsciousness before his brain took over and began replaying the final moments of the Pathfinder ship.  He considered his options, and decided to talk with Pilot about a solution to their food shortage.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Crichton sat with his legs inside Pilot’s station, further behind Pilot than usual after the exasperated creature had threatened to banish him from the Den if he didn’t stop swinging his feet and letting his heels bang against the base of his consoles.  John had finagled himself a reprieve by moving around behind Pilot to sit on an overhanging ledge.  There he could swing his feet to his heart’s content, and there were no obstacles to create the drumming that had driven Pilot to the point of issuing his threat.

“I have located a planet that appears to have some surplus food supplies.  This is not an actual commerce planet or an agricultural world, but they do seem willing to negotiate …”

“That’s great, Pilot,” John broke in, drowning him out.  “Who are these people, and how far away is the planet?”

Pilot sighed loudly, letting John know that he was annoyed at the interruption.  “They call their world and their species the Ashreikechin, which seems to indicate ‘people without war’.  They refer to themselves as the Ashrei.”  Pilot’s arms moved without pause as he accessed the information streaming into Moya’s data stores.

“People without war sounds like some folks we ought to get to know better, Pilot.  We haven’t stumbled across enough planets like that.”  John slid off his perch and moved forward, trying to make some sense of the data that flowed in a steady stream across one of Pilot’s displays, but was unable to catch more than a fraction of the flickering symbols.

“The term seems to apply more to the individuals who inhabit the planet, rather than their society,” Pilot said tentatively.  He manipulated several more controls, more assurance in his voice as he broached a different topic.  “I have tried to contact their government or some sort of leadership, but there doesn’t appear to be any sort of hierarchical group in charge of their society.”

“Who do we talk to then?”  John slid over the bulwarks and began to pace from one end of the Den’s center platform to the other, content to watch the energy pulses move through Moya’s conduits while the large creature behind him continued his search through the recently acquired information.

“I have been able to contact some sort of civil servant, who was very interested in dealing with us once I sent him some preliminary data on our identity.”  John’s head came up with a snap and he turned around with the beginning of an objection spilling out.  “I did NOT reveal our actual identity.  Crichton, the past two cycles in your company has taught me far more than the basic premises of obfuscation and prevarication.”

Crichton pointed at his own chest, feigning shock at the accusation.  “Me?  Pilot, I’m hurt.”

“Yes,” Pilot drew out the word over several microts, warning him with his tone that he was going too far with his teasing.  “Actually, I was referring to everyone aboard Moya.  Be assured, Rygel and Chiana have far more to offer in the way of deceitful behaviors than you do.”

“That makes me feel better … I think.”

“The individual on the planet merely seemed interested that we were not of his own species.  He is arranging communication with someone who might be able to help us with our negotiations.”

“Pipe him through.”  John started to climb back in next to Pilot.

“Do NOT come back in here, Crichton.”  Pilot treated him to his ‘I’ve-had-enough’ growl.  “The Ashrei have full voice and video transmission capabilities, but their representative seems to be transmitting from somewhere that lacks video capacity.  I can provide you with adequate voice reproduction over your comms right where you are now.”

John stumbled as he moved away from the symbiote’s domain, tripping over absolutely nothing, and it took all of his energy to right himself.  Moya’s huge cavern seemed to oscillate around him slightly, Pilot’s voice reaching him sounding slightly muffled as his mind and body struggled to cope with his self-imposed exhaustion.  He knew that his irritating behavior and restlessness were the result of being overtired, prompting him to issue a silent mental warning to take extra care during the pending discussion.

“All right, Pilot.  I’ll stay out here.  Just tell me who’s on the other end of the blower.”

“His name is Vossmarr, and he seems to be some sort of … physician.”  Pilot looked up, eyes bulging mildly with surprise.

The unexpected announcement helped John focus his attention.  “Are you sure you got that right, Pilot?”  The expression on Pilot’s face was all the answer he needed, and he waved the pending reply away before the annoyed tone was bestowed on him again.  “Put him through to my office.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When John didn’t appear in the Center Chamber for First Meal, Aeryn was tempted to ask Pilot if he knew where their wandering insomniac was, but decided not to alert everyone on board to the fact that he had spent another night without sleep.  She double checked his quarters after she finished her meal, and was on her way to Pilot’s Den to ask the question in person when her route took her past Command.  Her casual glance transformed into a glare when she spotted Crichton stretched out on the strategy table, apparently sound asleep.

She started into the chamber, preparing to unload her aggravation on him, then decided that he needed the sleep more than she needed the release.  Aeryn stuffed her un-vented concern and frustration back down where it had been fermenting for almost three solar days, and turned quietly to leave.  Her retreat was arrested by a mumbling voice behind her.

“I’m awake.  Come on in and let me have it.”  John sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the table so he faced the forward view portal, his back turned toward Aeryn.

“Let you have what?”

“Aeryn, drop the act.  Every time you see me not sleeping in my quarters, or sleeping not in my quarters, you let me know exactly what you think.  Don’t hold back now.”  He didn’t bother turning around to face her.

His t-shirt and leather pants never looked any different whether he slept in them or not, but his hair was matted against his skull, clearly dirty, and she could smell the acrid tang of old sweat as she drew closer.  He finally turned to look at her as she stopped alongside him, the gray tones of exhaustion highlighting the dark smears under his eyes.  John had never looked this bad before, and instead of feeling annoyed, Aeryn felt the smallest vibration of fear run up her spine, striking a chill into her back.

John’s capacity for coping with everything life threw at him had always seemed limitless, something she had come to take for granted over the past cycles.  But in the instant that he turned to look at her with those bloodshot eyes, she questioned that perception for the first time.  Aeryn found herself wondering if he had finally been run over by the experience that would drive him into permanent emotional imbalance.

She looked away, giving herself time to think by watching the gradual shift of the stars through the forward portal.  The Leviathan was maintaining an unswerving course toward a distant planet; one dim sphere remained directly in front of them as the others slowly migrated, .  “What’s going on?  Where are we headed?” she asked mildly, trying to maintain a calm attitude.

“Pilot found a planet with some surplus food supplies.  They’re willing to swap munchies for some sort of services rendered.”  He scratched at the stubble on his chin.  “We’ll be there in about six arns unless I fell asleep here for a while, in which case we’ll be there sooner.”  He cocked his head, seeming to notice that he had stated the blatantly obvious only after he’d finished talking.  “There’s your original Yogi Bera insight,” he grinned tiredly.

The calm attitude fled in the face of fierce irritation.  “It’s all set up already?  You found the planet, negotiated, arranged for the supplies, spoke for the rest of us?”  Aeryn stalked to the navigation console and stared at the displayed information without really seeing what was before her.  “Are there any decisions you didn’t make for us, John?  I thought this was exactly what we decided got us into that last situation.”

“Aeryn, this one wasn’t … a tough one to figure out.”  He’d started to say ‘rocket science’ but shifted when he realized that the cliché was only going to give her free ammunition.  Then he’d been about to say ‘brain surgery’, but decided that little subject didn’t need to come up either -- not after what they’d been through in the last cycle.  “We’re out of food, and although I’d love to sit around all day licking barbeque sauce off my fingers, I haven’t noticed a keedva stashed aboard Moya lately.  And the “Be-Slim-Fast” plan didn’t work real well the last time we tried it, in case you’ve forgotten, or perhaps you enjoyed your experience with the blooming blue bush, as you called her.”

“That isn’t the point, John!” Aeryn yelled at him, her temper almost out of control as the memory of her struggle with Zhaan ignited a fierce pain deep inside.  “We agreed that no one was going to make decisions for everyone else from now on.  That’s the way you wanted it.”

“We … need … food,” he chanted back at her, beginning to raise his voice also.  “They have food.  They will trade for food.  They don’t want currency for food.  We are almost out of currency.  WHAT is the big decision to be made here?”

“What decision are we making?” D’Argo asked cheerfully, walking into Command without noticing the rigid, angry stances.

“Stay out of this!” both combatants yelled at the same time.

“Whoa …”  The warrior took one look at the pair and backed carefully out of the chamber, disappearing hastily as soon as he was out of the door.

“So you’re completely comfortable taking over on this one, is that it?”  Aeryn waited for the nod she knew she would get from John, but somehow didn’t feel pleased when it arrived.  “Then why don’t you go down to your quarters and get some sleep?  Isn’t that what all this wandering around at night has been about?  You should be able to sleep fine now that you’ve worked this out to the point where you can lead us all wherever YOU want to go.  What do they have on that planet besides food?  Are we going to trade for some wormholes while we’re there?”

She watched his face go even paler underneath his mask of fatigue, the last of the blood draining away as her words echoed around them.  She’d tried to bite back the final accusation, but it had escaped from her lips before she knew what she was saying.  John backed away from her looking as though someone had just stabbed him in the stomach with a commando long blade.  He opened his mouth twice, no words coming out either time, then turned and started toward the door.

“No, goddamn it.  That’s not fair.” John turned around, the flush of anger accentuating his pallor and hollow eyes.  “This isn’t the same at all.  D’ARGO!  Get in here.”

Aeryn watched the jerky motions, the glittering hint of madness in his eyes, and knew that John had hit a new level of anger unlike anything she’d witnessed in him before.  She’d accidentally ripped an already raw wound wide open, subjecting him to a pain that was intolerable in his current state of exhaustion.

She’d seen him crazed, angry, possessed, annoyed to shouting lunacy, and driven to madness by the chip; but she’d never before seen him in this state of anguished fury.

D’Argo walked cautiously through the ovoid door, stopping prudently halfway across the room from where John was waiting, his back turned toward Aeryn.  He watched the pair warily as John’s furious shout reigned in the chamber.

“Do you agree with Aeryn?  Is this a decision that should have been made by all of us?”  John stood absolutely still while he waited for the verdict, but the muscles in his arms and shoulders were clenching and unclenching with the tension that his anger was packing into his body.

“Well, John,” D’Argo said hesitantly.  “You did vow …”

“PILOT!” John yelled before the Luxan could finish.  “Stop the boat!  We’ll be changing port of call.”

“Where are we going now, Crichton?”  Pilot’s image appeared in the clamshell, looking exasperated.  “I have already explained to you that there is no other planet within five solar days travel that has the surplus food supplies which meet our requirements.”

“I haven’t a clue, Pilot.  Ask Ensign Pulverizer where she and her faithful followers want to go.  I’ll be in my quarters, but feel free to comm me when dinner is served.  I’d prefer something more appetizing than fried dentics.”  He hurried toward the door, his posture still shrieking a warning to everyone that he was furious.  “Been there, done that,” he grumbled as he went past D’Argo and disappeared into the tier.

The warrior waited until the ringing footsteps faded before he let his breath out in a long tone of relieved astonishment.  “That was …” He completed his slow turn away from the empty doorway barely in time to notice Aeryn’s still overcharged posture before he said anything more.  He clamped his mouth shut, not sure what he could say at this point without setting off another explosion.

“Aeryn,” Pilot’s holo-image ventured carefully.  “Moya would like to know what course we should take up next.”

“Continue toward the planet with the food supplies, Pilot.”  Aeryn stared blindly at the view screen, trying to analyze why her own emotions had spun out of control so easily.  She finally shook her head, unable to delve deeply enough into her own labyrinth of mixed feelings to ease the cause free.  She looked across at D’Argo, smothering an urge to smile when she noticed the way he was standing.  He looked like a man awaiting his own execution.  “I’m under control now,” she told him.

“You were not out of control,” he tried to reassure her.

“Yes, I was.  I can’t explain it, D’Argo.  John was absolutely correct in the decisions he made, and he’s right that we have no other options, but when he told me what he’d done I just …”  She stopped, at a loss for words, distracted by a sharp mental image of John eagerly headed for the hangar bay several days earlier with the Pathfinder recording device in his hand, Moya’s predicament secondary to his pursuit of wormhole knowledge.

“You went into Sebacean hyper-rage?” D’Argo offered when she continued to hesitate.

“Sebacean’s don’t have hyper-rage.”

“Tell that to Crichton,” he mumbled under his breath.

“I wouldn’t care if he were the one to pay the price for his decisions,” Aeryn went on, not hearing his quiet comment.  “Sometimes it seems like he keeps walking away while other people pay for his mistakes, and it makes me angry.”

“That’s not true, Aeryn.  John has certainly paid the price a number of times.”

“He’s still here, D’Argo.”  Tears threatened unexpectedly, and Aeryn rubbed at her eyes, forestalling a release of the liquid weakness.  “I wouldn’t mind his choosing our path if he was the one who paid this time.”

There was a loud hiss from her companion, drawing her gaze toward where D’Argo stood with both hands on the console, shaking his head emphatically.

“What’s the matter?” she asked him.

“You tempt fate when you say such a thing, Aeryn.”

“I DON’T want him to get hurt, D’Argo.  I would never wish for that.”  She stopped again, uncertain where she had been going with her argument.

He changed the subject abruptly.  “I’ll go see how much food we have left, and check with Pilot to see if we need are any other types of supplies.”   He stopped at her side as he moved toward the door.  “We all need time, Aeryn.  Zhaan meant a lot to everyone.”

D’Argo stared at the floor as he left the chamber, allowing himself the luxury of wallowing in his own grief for a few microts.  He looked up as he rounded the first corner of the corridor and jumped, brought to a complete halt by the sight of Crichton leaning against one of Moya’s thick internal ribs, close enough to the door to have heard every word of their conversation.

“John,” he stammered, immediately embarrassed by what had been said in Command.

“I was coming back to apologize to Aeryn.”  The explanation was barely audible, a quiet whisper of tenuously contained emotions.  “Guess there was nothing to apologize for.  She had it all in perspective.  Next time, I’ll make sure I’m the one who jumps in front of the runaway train.”

“Aeryn did not mean it the way it sounded, John.  She doesn’t blame you, and she doesn’t want to see you hurt.”

“No, she’s right, D’Argo.  I keep getting people hurt or killed.”  His friend was shaking his head, refusing to accept his assertion.  “Let’s see how John Lafitte, Curse of the Uncharted Territories has done so far.”  John began holding up fingers as he ran off the names.

“Crais’ brother.  Hassan.  I almost got Aeryn killed by letting Larraq on board, and Larraq is dead because of my dumb idea.  Verrell died, Matala went with him.  I personally sliced and diced Br’nee.  I released the override on Talyn and blew the snot out of a pile of Plokavoids.  That got Stark killed.  Well, he came back so I guess that doesn’t count.”  John put a finger back down.  “Almost forgot!  Gilina would still be happily splicing cables on some Gammak Base except for me,” he put a finger back up in the air.  “Scorpius killed over ten thousand Baniks just so he could get his hands on John Crichton.  AND!  Let’s not forget the really stellar performance of the cycle … I killed Aeryn.  If it weren’t for Zhaan, she wouldn’t be alive today.  And after that …” he stopped, looking as if he were going to be ill.

“You are NOT responsible for all of that, John.”  D’Argo started to reach for his friend, intending to put his hand on the human’s shoulder in an attempt to reassure him in a more basic, physical manner, but Crichton pulled away.

“I feel responsible.  I wish …”  John fell silent and began walking in the direction of their quarters.  “I hope that next time I make a lousy decision that I’m the one who pays for it instead of someone else.”

D’Argo shook his head, disturbed by the similarity of Crichton’s and Aeryn’s remarks.  “John, do not make such a statement.  My people have a saying.  ‘Be careful what you wish for.  It may come true.’”

“We have a saying on my planet too, D’Argo.  ‘Do not fold, bend, spindle or mutilate.’  They’re both just sayings, nothing more.”  Crichton slapped one of the arching golden ribs as he turned the corner and disappeared from sight, leaving a perplexed Luxan transfixed in the middle of the corridor.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Aeryn continued to stare out the forward view portal, deliberately using the incremental, hypnotic shifts in scenery to calm her until she could review the recent exchange without triggering another emotional bombardment.  It had been John’s reference to Zhaan -- ‘the blooming blue bush’ -- that had ignited the explosion within, rendering her incapable of a balanced, rational response to his actions.  Slamming a fist against the navigation console released some of her pent up misery, but did little to ease the rising flood of grief and guilt.  “It was a poor trade, Zhaan,” she said to the empty chamber, then turned her thoughts to how she could initiate an apology to John.

“Aeryn?”  Pilot’s purplish image appeared in the clamshell.

“Yes, Pilot.”

“The Ashrei representative that Crichton spoke to earlier has contacted us.  He would like to discuss our projected time of arrival and arrange a meeting place.”

“John has gone to his quarters, Pilot.  I’ll talk to …”  She realized that she didn’t know anything about what John had arranged, or who he had been talking to on the planet.

“His name is Vossmarr,” Pilot offered.

“Open a comms channel and put the image up here, please.”

The image of a slender, thin-faced being appeared before her, floating semi-translucently before the changing view of the stars.  His expression changed to one of wary shock as soon as he saw her, and he spoke before she could say anything.  “This is, perhaps, a bit unexpected.  I had anticipated an exchange with a Mainart Kreps.”  His gaze shifted away from Aeryn, focusing off to one side briefly, then shifting back again while his light brown skin paled to a washed out beige.

“What’s going on?” D’Argo asked from behind Aeryn’s shoulder.

“He was expecting you know who.”  Aeryn avoided using Crichton’s name despite her whisper.  “Vossmarr,” she raised her voice as she returned to the transmission.  “Kribs is not free to talk to you at this time, but I’m sure we can agree upon a time and place for a meeting.  Was there any other matter that needed to be discussed prior to our arrival?”

Beige skin slowly transitioned back to light brown as they waited through obvious indecision.  Vossmarr finally shook his head.  “It is, perhaps, more desirable to continue my discussion with the individual who initiated our tentative agreement.  If he is no longer available, then perhaps this trade is not necessary.”

“No!” D’Argo said vehemently.  He stepped in front of Aeryn, and continued with more moderation.  “We do desire the trade.  We’ll find him for you.  Can you wait a few microts?”

Vossmarr nodded gracefully.  “I will be here when you are ready.”  The screen went blank.

“Your reaction was a little extreme,” Aeryn observed impassively.

“John was correct, Aeryn.  We’re out of food and there isn’t any place within five solar days travel that can provide what we need.  If we don’t get supplies here, we go hungry.  Where is Crichton?”

“John, we need you in Command.”  Aeryn called to him over her comms.

“I’m busy,” his disembodied voice floated back.

D’Argo placed a hand on her arm, preventing an angry retort, and took over.  “John, we’re in contact with the planet, but this person will only talk to someone named Main Art Kribs.  You must come up here and deal with him.”

“It’s ‘Meynard Krebs’, and tell him I can’t be disturbed.  I’m fasting.  It’s a religious thing.”

D’Argo sighed through his nose, managing to sound depressed and irritated at the same time.  “John,” he admonished.

“Why Command?  Do we have a visual transmission this time?”

“Yes.  He’s waiting for us to contact him.  Please come up here.”  D’Argo raised his eyebrows at Aeryn, silently questioning whether his polite urging would persuade the human to acquiesce.  She shook her head, uncertain whether enough time had passed to allow John to calm down to the point where he would cooperate.

The comms relayed a sigh and the squeaking rustle of leather.  “On my way.  Have the senior officers meet me in my ready room.”  The comms chirped once and went quiet.

D’Argo looked to Aeryn a second time.  “Senior officers?”

She was already shaking her head.  “I haven’t a clue,” she said disgustedly.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Interlude

“Interlude:  … an intervening time or space of a different character or sort.”  (Oxford English Dictionary)

John Crichton sat motionless on the beach, his arms resting on his knees, watching one long roller after another crest, break, and smash down onto the sand.  The foaming remains of each wave slithered up the even hard-packed beach to reach for his toes, hissing in disappointment each time that it failed to touch him.  Wind-flung sand nipped at shoulder and ribs on one side of his body, a Lilliputian attack that was equally impotent as the foam that eased away just short of him again and again.

The sun beat against the back of his shoulders, sinking warmth into muscles that hadn’t soaked in the heat under a blue sky since … since … he couldn’t remember.  A name floated into his memory, disturbingly bereft of any associated image.  There had been a place that was sunny and warm, but the niche in his mind with the label ‘Acquara’ over it was empty of any other details.  He wasn’t worried about the gaps in his memory, everything here was too familiar.  He inhaled deeply, enjoying the smell of the ocean.  He reflected on the irony that it was rotting sea life that made a beach smell this way.  It was death and putrefaction that triggered the pleasant memories of sandcastles, dams melting before the tide, and carefully dug canals filling with rushing water.

John squinted against the glare as he scanned up and down the beach, trying to remember just how he had gotten here.  He knew he was at Hampton Beach -- he recognized it from when he’d come up here with a group from college -- but he’d never seen the entire beach empty like this, especially on such a nice day.  He could hear the traffic and chaos of the boardwalk behind him so he knew that other people were here, they just weren’t on the beach, which was puzzling.  It didn’t really matter, he decided.  It was too nice a day to worry about what anyone else was doing.

His legs were cramping from his unmoving position, somehow feeding the discomfort into his stomach as well.  John unwound himself and got up, twitching the black trunks a little further up on his hips as he strode down to where the waves were rumbling onto the shore.  He danced back as the first wave washed around his shins, chilling his ankles to aching numbness at the first touch.  It was New Hampshire after all, he lectured himself, summer here seemed to last about two and a half weeks, which was never long enough for the water to get warm.

The discomfort in his stomach and legs was getting stronger, a pulsing throb that seemed to come and go in time with the waves.  The roar of the surf had taken up residence in his ears, making it difficult to hear the breeze and the seagulls, making it hard to think.  The cold water would mute the pain, and ease the hot feeling in his stomach, he decided.  John waded into the surf, ignoring the first cutting fingers of cold, moving deeper until the water washed away all of the soreness.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Part 2

The transport pod settled in a fallow field beyond the cluster of buildings with none of the usual billows of dust.  The heavy struts eased through weeds and sank deeply into the dark, loamy soil underneath, the scraggly greenery holding the dirt in place despite the dying thrust from the engines.  Crichton opened the hatch and led the way down the steps, followed by D’Argo, Chiana, and finally Aeryn.  His hand rested comfortably on the grip of his pulse pistol as he scanned the fields around him, ensuring that no one other than the local inhabitants was aware of their arrival.  A single figure waited for them at the edge of the field.

“Not much of a reception committee,” John said.

“Kind of a nice change from our usual luck with people waiting for us,” D’Argo offered from behind his shoulder.

“Is that Vossmarr?” Aeryn asked, cutting in before John could respond.

“Looks like him.  Bit taller than I expected.”  John recognized the Ashrei from his negotiations aboard Moya, but the video transmissions hadn’t prepared him for the Ashrei’s true appearance.  He moved toward the group with a slow, graceful gait, seeming to flow effortlessly across the weedy ground.  His height was accentuated by the long tunic and loose pants that he wore, the rippling clothes serving to highlight his thin frame rather than obscure it.  He stopped in front of the small group, towering over D’Argo by almost half a head, and forcing John to step back in order to look up at him without straining his neck.

“Welcome.  I am Vossmarr.”  Black eyes examined the disparate group, then studied Crichton with sharpening interest.  “You are, perhaps, John Crichton?”  He placed both hands against his chest and bowed slightly in John’s direction.

Aeryn released her pulse pistol with a loud clack, but let it rest in the holster as she moved up to John’s side with one long stride.  D’Argo hissed and drew his Qualta blade.

“Spoke too soon.”  Chiana sounded alert but not alarmed.

“Please, please, there is no threat here.”  Vossmarr waved slender, seven-fingered hands at them.  “We are Ashrei, there is no threat.  I was merely attempting to confirm what we had already deduced.”

“Which is?”  Aeryn demanded.

“We had no suspicion that we were dealing with anyone other than Mainart Kreps when you first contacted us, but when I later observed two Sebaceans and a Luxan,” he gestured at them, “aboard a Leviathan, it became, perhaps, more evident who had contacted us.”  The bony shoulders settled beneath the light cloth of his tunic as some of the tension eased under the pressure of his careful explanation.  “We have heard rumors.”  His voice was a soft, songlike baritone, sapping all force from each statement.

“Is this a problem?”  John slid Winona back into her holster, but withheld sliding the grip under the catch.  He watched, fascinated, as the Ashrei’s nervous hands caught at the fabric of his tunic, two opposable thumbs on each hand resulting in four grips instead of two.

“You are really here to trade for food supplies?”  Black eyes bounced from one person to the next, checking on their reactions as John nodded.  “Then this is, perhaps, most providential.  We are pleased to have you here.”  He gestured with both hands toward the buildings in the distance.  “Come.  We will discuss what we ask in return when we are more comfortable.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

John studied the three Ashrei as they were ushered in the home of Vossmarr’s uncle.  He wondered how these apparently insignificant individuals had been selected to negotiate with them.  Vossmarr had been thrust into the lead position by the others, apparently against his will, but was proving to be a gracious, gentle host.

They’d walked the short distance from the landing site to the house of his uncle, doing no more than exchanging pleasantries during the brief journey.  John had glanced at Aeryn from time to time as she strode along, watching her impatience grow but remain under control.  They’d been joined at the edge of the village by Vossmarr’s uncle, Sellimarr, and another male Ashrei introduced as Aksal, a work colleague.  The easy rapport between the three men, however,  suggested that Aksal was a close friend.

Sellimarr led the group into a large room on the ground floor, and invited them to arrange themselves around a long table.  They milled about for several microts, performing an intricate maneuvering as the two groups independently determined where they wanted to sit and who they preferred to face.

John tried to ease behind D’Argo in order to sit across from Aeryn and stumbled, clumsy with fatigue.  Vossmarr caught him as he staggered, one large hand coming to rest against his neck, the other catching his arm before he could tumble to the floor.  Crichton was levitated back onto his feet, the slender frame exerting far more strength than it appeared to possess.

Vossmarr stared at him for several microts with what looked like concern in his expression.  “Are you capable of completing these discussions, John Crichton?” he asked.  “You would, perhaps, prefer to do this some other time?”  His hand lingered against John’s neck, one long index finger pressing behind his ear.

“I’m fine,” John returned, sounding more annoyed than he had intended.  He pulled away from the odd grasp impatiently.  “Just a little tired.”  He crossed the short distance to the seat he’d selected, and slumped into it, leaning heavily on the table as he waited for the Ashrei to take their places.

“Aksal,” Vossmarr spoke across the room.  “Perhaps you could find Mafflelle and bring her here.”

“Mafflelle?  You need her?”  Aksal seemed confused.  Vossmarr nodded languidly, offering no other explanation, and began a slow saunter around the room.  Aksal scratched his head with the three center fingers of one hand, then disappeared out the door without further comment.

“It will be only a few moments,” Vossmarr offered.  “I would prefer that Aksal be present before we continue.”

“Who is Mafflelle?  Your negotiator?” asked Aeryn, venting her impatience.

Vossmarr inclined his head to one side, somehow declining to answer her question without making it any sort of insult.  The tall Ashrei continued to wander around the room, ducking and swaying without conscious thought to avoid low rafters.  He rearranged several chairs, pulling some away from the table, placing others against the wall in what appeared to be a nervous habit.  He stopped next to where John had slumped down in the hard wooden chair, his head resting on the back as he watched the easy, graceful movements.  Vossmarr motioned toward a long, padded alcove in one wall and John moved to the new seating, stretching out and folding his hands over his stomach as their host moved the vacated chair to a new position.

Aksal returned, carrying a small fuzzy animal, shifting it constantly from one hand to another.  “Here she is,” he announced.  The perpetual transference didn’t seem to bother the creature.  It was making a low hiccupping chirp as it slithered from one grasp to the next, an expression of pleasure rather than irritation.

“We were waiting for a pet?” Chiana asked.  Her question went unanswered.

“John Crichton.  You could, perhaps, hold her for a few moments.”  Vossmarr’s tone made his statement both a question and a command.  Aksal poured the relaxed bundle of fur into John’s lap before the startled astronaut could respond.

“What is this thing?” he asked, holding it up with both hands to look it over.  “It looks like a cross between a kitten and a spider that mated in Chernobyl.”  He put the small animal down on his chest and pulled another pillow behind his head so he could watch more comfortably as it explored his t-shirt, burrowing inside his vest and then popping back out to check on its surroundings.  “Gamma kitty,” he suggested, nudging it gently.

“It is a Kechin feltisk cub.  They are indigenous to this planet only, and do not seem to fare well on other worlds, so most people are not familiar with them.  She is a pet and is harmless.”  Vossmarr continued his wandering route around the room, distractedly touching small items on the shelves.

John let the cub sit on his stomach and ventured a gentle rubbing behind the floppy ears, waiting to judge its reaction to the petting.  Wide blue eyes were set on opposite sides of its head, so it looked at him first with one eye and then the other, cocking its head to change views.  It seemed to like what it saw because it got up, tromped in place with six soft paws for a few microts, then flopped back down and made itself comfortable.  John ran his fingers gently down the thick spotted fur along its spine, triggering an increase in the rate of the hiccupping sounds, until the little body was vibrating with nonstop chirps.

“You’ve finally made a friend in this universe,” Chiana teased, watching the pair.

“Yeah, Chi, I’ve made a great impression,” John agreed sarcastically, prodding at the animal with one finger.  “Look at this, it’s already asleep and nothing will wake it up.”

“Vossmarr,” Aeryn tried to draw the Ashrei’s attention away from the events in the corner.  “You asked us to come down in person to discuss what you wanted in trade for the food.  Can we …”  Aeryn broke off, speechless as she stared across the room at Crichton.  “What did you do to him?” she breathed at last.

D’Argo and Chiana spun around, alarmed by the disbelief in Aeryn’s voice, but the only sight out of the ordinary was that of John asleep with the feltisk still on his stomach.  Vossmarr hurried around the table to stand next to Crichton, looking back at Aeryn in concern.  “Perhaps I misjudged the situation.  He is exhausted.  Is this not desirable?”

“Yes!” Aeryn struggled with the single word, amazed that John was sleeping through the conversation.  “Yes, it is extremely desirable, but no one has been able to get him to sleep lately.  Did you do this?”

“How did you do it?  That’s what I want to know,” D’Argo demanded.

“It is Mafflelle,” Vossmarr offered.  “She put him to sleep.”

“Fur and chirpy noises made him go to sleep,” Chiana said disparagingly.  “I don’t buy it.”

“It is, perhaps, a little more involved than that,” Vossmarr said gently, but not unkindly.  “The feltisk has a sympathetic nervous system that links to anything that touches it.”  He pointed to where Crichton’s hand rested on the cub’s back.  “It senses his fatigue, therefore it goes to sleep, and since they are linked, he goes to sleep as well.  It is very convenient whenever someone is suffering from any sort of sleep disturbances.”

“When will he wake up?” Aeryn asked.

“When John Crichton is rested the feltisk will awaken and wander off.  He will wake up immediately after it leaves.  If he is needed before then, you must wake the cub up before holding on to it, then simply remove it.  Perhaps this is not the best recourse for John Crichton’s fatigue.  Would you like me …”

“NO!”  Three voices barked in unison, stopping Vossmarr before he could remove the feltisk.

“Let him sleep for a while,” D’Argo said more calmly.  “And in the meantime, you can tell us about your offer to trade for the food we need.”

“And maybe we can work one of those cubs into the deal as well,” offered Chiana, her attention still centered on the senseless pair in the alcove.  She turned as Aeryn made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat.  “Not for a pet,” Chiana objected.  “For the next time Crichton decides he’s going to give up sleeping.”

“Wait a microt,” D’Argo interrupted.  “How did you know John was exhausted?”

“Vossmarr is an Aleph,” Aksal replied, making it sound like that was all the explanation that was required.  He seemed to shrink a little as three blank stares turned in his direction, and tried again.  “An Aleph is a physician of the highest rank on our world.  They can feel a person’s physical state with a touch.”

“You intuit disease,” suggested Chiana, remembering the Diagnosan.

“Intuition is too unreliable,” Vossmarr answered over his shoulder.  He pulled a blanket off a shelf near the ceiling and flicked it over Crichton and the feltisk, unfolding it and sailing it into place in a single deft move.  Mafflelle yawned once as the cover settled over them, but the larger body beneath her didn’t stir.  The healer touched Crichton’s temple lightly for several microts, nodding in satisfaction, then pulled a chair back to the table.  He folded himself into the wooden seat at an angle so he could face everyone at the table at once.

“My family has a very strong genetic disposition toward the healing sciences,” he explained.  “Alephs are born, not trained, although a great deal of training goes into our profession.  My nervous system is, perhaps, more highly attuned to the impulses in another person than is ordinary.”  He smiled benignly.  “An Aleph can learn to feel when an individual’s physiology is out of balance and determine what is causing the disorder.  Such as exhaustion.”  He gestured toward the alcove.

“Then you’re an Aleph, too.”  Chiana turned toward Aksal.

He shook his head vehemently.  “I do not have the genetic capacity.  I am only a trained physician.  I can perform the tasks, but I cannot make the more intricate diagnoses.”

Aeryn was still watching the sleeping pair in the alcove.  “If you had told me about this, I never would have believed it.  I would have argued that you’d need a bigger animal to put John to sleep.”

“Oh, no.  We never use a full grown feltisk,” Vossmarr cautioned, missing Aeryn’s attempt at humor entirely.

“Why not?”  Chiana was on her feet, carefully petting the sleeping cub with a gloved hand.

“An adult feltisk eats almost eight times its body weight in food every day.  The patient sleeps quite well, but they tend to make themselves sick from eating once they wake up.”  Vossmarr shook his head.  “It never works out very well.”

“Can we get back to the point?” asked D’Argo.  “The trade for supplies.  What did you want in exchange?”

“We would like you to kill something for us.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight.”  Crichton pulled the long tasseled end off a plant and began weaving it around his fingers.  “The Ashrei are incapable of aggressive behavior, not even in the interest of self-defense, so they want us to kill some ugly, evil critter that lives at the bottom of a lake.”  The path narrowed as they left the last of the fields and he slowed for a moment so Aeryn could step in front of him.  Vossmarr, D’Argo and Chiana were disappearing into the woods ahead of them, the sound of their voices drifting back but too quietly to make out the words.

Aeryn nodded as she led the way.  “Their society is made up of healers, artisans, diplomats, technicians, and the like.  That’s why Pilot couldn’t locate a government.  They only have civil servants.  Vossmarr said that in order to want to lead, there must be a desire for power, and they are genetically incapable of that type of thinking or behavior.  They can serve the public as a civil servant, but they can’t assume a leadership role.”

“What do kids play instead of cops and robbers?”

“What?”

“Never mind.  I still can’t believe I slept through all of this.”  He shook his head, unable to remember even the sound of their voices although they’d been in the same room.  “Tell me more about the critter.”

“They don’t know what it is or what it looks like.  It only comes out at night, and no one has ever seen it and lived to tell about it.  They’ve tracked it to the lake so they’re sure it lives in the water, but that seems to be about all they know.  They tried staying away from the lake at night, but it’s traveling further every cycle and they’re afraid it will begin coming into the town soon.”  She was moving faster as the glint of the water showed through the trees, hurrying to catch up with the trio in front of them.

“But they didn’t ask anyone to kill it before now.”  John found himself short of breath as he hurried to keep up with Aeryn’s long easy stride.  “Why us?  Why now?”

“They were evasive when we asked that.  D’Argo and I discussed it afterward, and we decided that we probably just showed up right at the moment when they decided something had to be done.  We don’t know what other species have stopped through here lately, but we seem to be the only ones …”

“Pathetic enough?” John interjected.

“… who need to trade for anything badly enough to agree to do this.”  She glanced over her shoulder at him, pleased that the short sleep had restored some color and vitality to his features.  They hadn’t told him about the feltisk yet, assuming he’d be angry if he found out they’d put him to sleep deliberately.  “They’re desperate, John.  They’ll give us as many supplies as we want if we kill this creature.”

John moved forward to walk alongside her as the path widened.  Their footsteps rang in cadence as they strode along without talking for a short distance, taking the opportunity to enjoy the mild temperatures and clean air.  The Ashrei had little heavy industry, and the atmosphere here was unspoiled, devoid of the dark belchings of progress.  John watched Aeryn take a long, deep breath just as his own ribs reached their limit, sucking in a lungful of the mild scent of trees and moist earth.  He smiled at her as they exhaled together.

“Nice place.  You could set up your own little business here.  ‘Aggression For Hire.’”  His fingers put the quotations around the title for her.  “No competition, set your own price.”

“And go out of my mind with boredom within a quarter cycle.”  She bumped against him gently, shoving him off the path, then walked more quickly to catch up with the others.

They broke out of the forest onto a narrow band of ledge that sloped gently down to the shoreline.  The rock disappeared under black sand as they approached the water, squat moist looking plants interjecting occasionally where they had taken hold in muddier, richer soil.  John watched Aeryn’s boots sink into the surface, leaving deep gouges that slowly filled with water as she cut across the shore to join the others.  He shook his head at the nearly liquefied soil and worked his way along the rock until he could take the shortest route through the sand and mud to join them.

Vossmarr was talking as he approached the others.  “The last time it killed any … ”  He made an odd choking noise, and turned away from everyone.  The bony shoulders rose and fell once, accompanied by a long but quiet sigh, then he turned back to face them.  “I apologize.  The last time the creature killed anyone was three planetary days ago.  It took a small child.  Your arrival was, perhaps, most timely.  We believe it will venture out again soon.  Perhaps even tonight.”

John looked at the still, dark waters of the lake.  “You’re sure it took this kid?  Kids get lost.  Maybe this one just wandered off.”  He picked up a rock and threw it, watching as it skipped four times and disappeared with a quiet ‘thup’.

“He was traveling a well-known route, and he would not have strayed.”  Vossmarr watched another rock skip across the water.  “This seems to trouble you, John Crichton.  Perhaps you would prefer not to make the trade?”

John stared at the widening ripples in the water, rummaging through the clutter of his emotions to extract the fragment that was bothering him.  He rested his hand on Winona, the cold metal fitting naturally into his palm and warming beneath his touch.  He was tired of pulling the trigger.  He’d learned how to do it, but it never felt right, no matter how many times he was shown that it was the appropriate thing to do.

“Are you sure this critter is doing the killing?  My planet had a whole slew of misunderstood species that were simply trying to survive and were hunted to extinction out of ignorance and fear.  Maybe this thing is just the Loch Ness Monster, hangin’ out slurpin’ fish, and getting blamed for what someone or something else is doing.”

“It would not be some-ONE else,” Vossmarr said with more emphasis than he had produced since they had met him.  “Ashreikechin are incapable of this behavior.  It must be some-THING that is doing the killing.  We have tracked it repeatedly back to the lake, John Crichton.  Whatever it is, it is in there.”

“People without war.”  John repeated the phrase that Pilot had mentioned, feeling stupid as the last pieces clicked into place.  “You are the ones without war.  You.  The people specifically.”  The looks around him implied that he was discussing information they’d already covered.

“Yes.  The Ashrei lost the capacity generations ago.”  Vossmarr motioned for them to follow him, undisturbed by John’s skepticism.  “Come.  I will show you where the creature normally travels when it kills.  We have avoided the area for several cycles, but it continues to find new victims.”

“Is this thing just feeding?” John asked.  “Could we lure it out with a sacrificial goat?”

“Goat?”  D’Argo asked just before Vossmarr chimed in.

“A goat.  About this big, hairy, horns, eats tin cans,” he kidded.  “Mba-a-a-a-a-a.”  Aeryn stepped ahead of him before he could be certain, but even from behind it looked like she was laughing.  “Any sort of farm animal,” John relented.

“We tried feeding the creature, but it ignored the animals in favor of taking more Ashrei.”  The healer made a frustrated gesture.  “If anything, the killing increased when we left the animals.  It touched none of them.”

They hurried along behind Vossmarr’s floating stride, leaving the narrow beach and moving through the trees almost parallel to the lakeshore.  Five sets of footsteps echoed hollowly as he led them onto a boardwalk that zigzagged into tall marsh grass, cutting across small streams and wide expanses of black mud.  He drew to a stop where the walkway arched to cross a wider waterway, both banks covered with the plump vegetation that had grown only sparsely in the sandy soil surrounding the lake.

“The creature seems to use the watercourses to travel, making most of its kills near this stream or four of the smaller ones.  The ground in between,” he pointed to the expanses of mud, “is very soft, and difficult to cross for any being of substantial size.”

“How the hell are we supposed to track and kill the Nessie in the Okefenokee Swamp?” John asked softly, gazing at the marshland that stretched almost to the village.  “How far does this extend side to side?”

“The grass marsh ends at the tree line,” a thin hand pointed to either side, “but the soft ground extends into the edges of the forest, and two of the streams I mentioned flow through the trees.”  Vossmarr stopped to consider.  “It is, perhaps, half a metra from side to side.  We have never found tracks outside the area.”

“How deep does that get?” Chiana asked, redirecting everyone’s attention.  She was sitting on the edge of the boardwalk, prodding at the mud with the toe of her boot.  The black ooze quivered in response to her nudges, setting off small slithering waves in all directions.

“The last time I fell in …”  Four heads turned simultaneously to look at Vossmarr, whose features assumed a darker shade of beige.  “It is a game for the young.  But it is, perhaps, quite enjoyable when you are the one who pushes instead of the one who gets pushed.  Even for an adult.”  He recovered his air of quiet dignity.  “The last time I got pushed in, it was slightly less than waist deep.  The depth is relatively constant.”

Crichton sidled over to Vossmarr, comparing where the Ashrei’s waist came in comparison to his own body.  “Frell.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The wooden walkway bounced and echoed under D’Argo’s feet as he paced from one side of the marsh to the other, surveying the territory they would have to search if they were to catch the ‘Nezzie’.  The proposed operation bothered him.  He didn’t mind killing as part of a barter agreement, the Luxans had sold their services as warriors for generations.  Selling one’s strength and courage was a noble profession, provided the contractors were fighting for a righteous cause, and the Ashrei had shown that they were deserving of his assistance.  It was the terrain that was unacceptable.

He hissed in disgust as he watched slow-flowing black water whirl around the pilings of the small arching bridge.  Water and mud.  Any effective campaign against this elusive creature would involve getting wet, and he would certainly have to take a bath afterwards.  A growl grumbled loose as he considered their options for covering the ground during the coming night.

“Something not to your liking, D’Argo?”  Aeryn strode rapidly around a bend of the catwalk, scanning the marsh to both sides.

“What convinced you of that?” he said sarcastically.

“The fact that your growls have scared all small wildlife away for a distance of five metras.”  Her quiet smile was greeted by a larger one from D’Argo.

They were more serious as they looked the soft ground over together.  “I don’t like this, Aeryn.  It will be too easy to miss the creature if we stay on the walkway.  There are four of us and five streams.”

“And that’s assuming the Ashrei are correct that it only travels in the streambeds,” she agreed.  “Some of the pools interconnect.”  She pointed into the watery maze for emphasis.  “Anything that can get up the waterways may be able to cut from one to another.”

“Agreed.”  They walked back toward the largest stream together.  “Working our way through the marshes is no better,” he finally admitted.  “But we would stand a better chance of finding the creature if we are out there.”  He waved at the grass and water expanse stretching toward the village.  “What do you think of the Ashrei claims?  Do you think this Nezzie thing is as fearsome as they claim?”

Aeryn pointed out an area of deeper water, something to be avoided in the dark.  He acknowledged with a nod.  “These are a truly non-violent people.  They’ve never experienced battle or warfare.  I can accept that this Nessie kills only Ashrei, but I think the only difficult part will be finding it.  The pulse rifles should take care of it easily.”

The pair marched together, noting and memorizing features so they would be able to navigate in the dark.  Their conversation drew to an end as they followed the boardwalk around a series of corners and saw Crichton leaning his elbows on the railing of the largest bridge.

“We can talk about this later,” Aeryn suggested.  “We all need to agree how we’re going to cover the terrain, and we can discuss what equipment we’ll require from Moya.”  D’Argo nodded and turned back toward the village, following the route taken earlier by Chiana and Vossmarr.

Aeryn remained where she was for several microts, watching John drop bits of twigs and grass into the water to gradually float away on the current.  The day was warm, and the slow breeze crossing the marsh was humid.  He had removed his vest and draped it over the railing next to him, the lean muscles flexing beneath the thin cover of his t-shirt as he stretched out an arm to drop another twig into the water.  There were too few moments like this when she could just stand back and watch him -- just watch him being himself without the tension of violence or disaster that seemed to follow them everywhere.

She crossed the distance between them quietly, not saying anything as he looked up.  He edged aside to make room, and she rested her hips against the railing beside his elbows so she could stare toward the afternoon sun.  “What’s bothering you?” she prodded gently.  She recognized the pensive stance and distracted expression.  He shook his head.  “John, I don’t know how much of a threat this creature really is, but if we’re going to do this, you need to be sure you can hold up your end.”

“I’ll do my part, Aeryn.”  Indignation was foremost in his tone, but she thought she heard depression there as well.  “I set this up initially, I’ll help kill the critter.”

She almost let it drop, but decided that the hazard of their proposed nighttime activity justified a bit more digging.  “What don’t you like about this?”  It had been obvious when they were beside the lake that he had reservations about tracking down the creature.

He was silent so long, she thought he wasn’t going to answer.  “Do we believe the Ashrei, Aeryn?  Are they the ones I’m supposed to trust?  My judgment has been absolute crap lately.  What if there’s something going on here that we don’t know about.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m just not sure this critter is the creature from the black lagoon that they’re making it out to be.  It could be the misunderstood Frankenstein’s monster, wandering the countryside looking for love, and killing only because the Ashrei it bumps into go totally freakazoid and scare it into committing Ashrecide.”

Aeryn considered his argument, working her way through the untranslatable parts until she had formulated a reasonable idea of what he’d been trying to express.  “You think the creature is killing the Ashrei because they’re startling it because it’s scaring them,” she summarized.

“I don’t know what I think at this point.  I only know that we’re about to barge off into the dark to hunt down and kill something when we don’t know the first thing about it.”  John reached into his pocket and pulled out a fistful of pebbles.  He began dropping them one by one into the water.

“You don’t have to come with us tonight,” she suggested.  “If you’re not sure …”

“I’m NOT letting you head out here without me.  I didn’t say I wouldn’t do this.”  John dropped the entire remaining handful into the water; the small hailstorm of pebbles spreading ripples in all directions.  “It’s getting late.  Let’s go make up a plan for throwing a Nessie on the barbeque.”

* * * * *

Interlude

John leaned against the sturdy metal fence, watching the eight man sculls skate along the Charles River, strange humped waterbugs driven by flickering wooden legs that rocked in cadence to the barely heard cries of the coxswains.  The autumn wind was whipping around the trees, flipping the water into tiny white caps, and making it difficult for the rowers to maintain their practiced synchronization.  He watched until they disappeared past the bridge, then turned to lean his back against the railing, resting his elbows on the cold metal.  It wasn’t dark enough for the streetlights yet, but the room lights in the buildings across the street were beginning to come on, highlighting the movements of the students and professors inside.

He’d always liked evening at MIT, when the lights came on to show where the ideas were forming.  Sometimes when a class was going right, when everyone was involved in a discussion and ideas were bouncing and leaping from one person to the next, he almost thought he could see the mental energy emanating from the minds in the room.  Teamwork like that was so rare these days, he thought.  Being able to rely on someone for their particular skills or knowledge was no longer a given in life.

John suddenly felt unsettled, as if everything in his life had gone wrong at the same instant.  He watched the commuter traffic gradually build until the rush and roar of the vehicles was constant, lights flicking past him in an unbroken stream.  There was nothing unusual here, nothing to alarm him, he assured himself.  He turned away from the view of the campus and began to walk along the river, the cold metal of the railing streaming away beneath his palm.  He was getting cold, and his legs were aching from the pounding on the pavement.

He heard someone calling to him from behind.  He turned and started walking back toward where he’d been standing.  When he got there the sidewalk was empty.  The cold was sinking into his stomach now, making that ache as well.  He looked over the railing, but he was alone on the riverbank.

The voice was still there, talking to him quietly, all but drowned beneath the constant roar in his ears.

John looked around confusion.  He could definitely hear a woman talking to him, her voice sharp with anxiety, but he was alone.  He leaned over the railing to see if he had missed someone down on the dock, but it was too dark to see anything now.  The cold from the metal handrail penetrated through his thin shirt and sank deep into his stomach, feeding energy into the furious cramping there.  He pressed one hand against the discomfort, bending over to ease the pain.  He thought he heard another voice talking to him, but the dark on the riverbank was complete, and he couldn’t see a thing.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Part 3

John glanced toward where the last sliver of sun spread its golden rays over a distant ridge line, and noted the lengthening shadows.  It was almost night.  A fast pass of his hand in front of the night vision lens verified that it was functioning; then he checked the chakan oil cartridge in his rifle one last time, and slid carefully into the mud below the boardwalk.  A growl of disgust burst over the comms, D’Argo’s contribution to the collection of wordless complaints as they began their patrol of the marsh areas between the five waterways.

The decision to venture off the boardwalks had been the most contentious point they’d had to settle as they developed their plan for hunting down the Nessie, as he had labeled the creature.  The argument had raged back and forth for almost two arns, John and Chiana on one side insisting that the boardwalk would give them an advantage, if only because there was firm footing, and Aeryn and D’Argo stridently advocating a more aggressive tactic of searching for the creature near the waterways.

The two warriors had ultimately worn them down, insisting that their method would get the job finished sooner.  John had bowed to their tactical experience, while Chiana had submitted to the decision unwillingly, concerned about their vulnerability if they were wading through the mud and water.

The ooze crept up to John’s armpits as he surged forward, and he questioned their decision for the tenth time since they’d left the town to foray into the marshes.  He began working his way toward the lake, heading toward the outlet of the largest of the five streams to begin his circuit.  They were spread out across the width of the marsh, depending on the firepower of the pulse rifles to compensate for the lack of backup if one of them got into trouble.

They’d had to blackmail Rygel into bringing the second transport pod down with the night vision lenses and pulse rifles.  His emphatic refusals had dissipated abruptly when Aeryn told the Hynerian that he would not be allowed to partake of the Ashrei food supplies if he did not help in their acquisition.  They’d used the threat of starvation to press him into service tonight as well, and he was currently flying a pattern perpendicular to their movements, armed with Aeryn’s pulse pistol.

“Rygel, where are you?” John whispered into his comms.  Stupid precaution, he decided.  The Nessie would probably smell him out before it heard him.

“I’m directly above Chiana.  And I would like to point out for the last time …”

“Shut UP, Rygel.  We’ve been over this.  We need you for spotter control and close air support.  Oh …”

“John, are you all right?”  Aeryn’s concerned voice burst out of the comms.

Crichton surfaced, shaking mud and filthy water out of his ears in time to hear the last half of Aeryn’s worried transmission.  “Relatively constant depth my ass.  I’m fine.  I went in over my head is all.”  The mud was washing into his boots and infiltrating its way inside his clothing.  He sent up a private prayer of thanks to whatever spirit had inspired him to leave Winona behind.  Something more solid stopped the toe of his boot and he stepped up onto it to work his way out of the viscous fluid that passed for water.  A huge bubble of marsh gas wobbled up and burst through the surface in front of him.  “Augh!  Holy Swamp Farts, Batman!  Whose idea was this, anyway?”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Aeryn worked her way carefully along the edge of the stream that bounded one side of the area she was assigned to patrol.  The initial disorientation resulting from overlaying normal vision with the enhanced view through the lens had passed quickly, and she found it simple to work from one partially submerged hassock of grass to another.  She smiled at John’s complaints, allowing herself a small moment to reflect that his decision to come to this planet was resulting in more discomfort for him than anyone else so far.  She scanned the edges of the stream for tracks, then crossed in a single leap and began working through the grass and mud at an angle to check the next stream.

Rygel’s Throne Sled passed overhead, making one lazy loop above her before continuing off to her right toward where John and then D’Argo were working their way downstream, roughly parallel to her route.  Their options for dispersing across the marsh had been limited once Pilot did a survey of the terrain.  The water and mud was deepest in the woods where D’Argo was working, the solid ground beneath the swamp sloping gradually upwards from one side of the marsh to the other.  Chiana was off to her left somewhere, also wending her way through the trees, but where it was most shallow.

“Chiana, any problems?”  She’d heard the occasional snort of disgust from D’Argo, but the Nebari had been silent so far.

“This is worse than a Relfinian sewer in a rainstorm,” the high-pitched voice offered.  Aeryn wondered how Chiana knew what the inside of a Relfinian sewer looked like in the first place.  “You owe me a new outfit when this is over, Crichton.”

“Fried dentics.  You could have passed this all up for fried dentics,” he responded.

The chatter and complaints continued as they worked their way down to the lake, back to the top of the marsh, and began a second circuit.

“Here, Nessie, Nessie, Nessie,” John sang.

“Hey, Crichton.  What was that idea you had about a farm animal?”  Chiana’s splashing came across the comms clearly.

“Tie out some bait and wait.  Much easier than wandering the Okefenokee Swamp all night, but Vossmarr said it wouldn’t work.”  He sneezed.  “I think I’m catching a cold.”

“But it’s warm tonight, not cold,” D’Argo kidded him.  “You can only catch a warm.”

“Hilarious, D.”

“Were you making an offer, Crichton?” Rygel asked.  Aeryn looked to her right and could see the vague energy glow in the sky where she assumed the Hynerian was circling above John.

“Won’t ever find me tying myself at the end of a rope as critter bait, Buckwheat.”

Aeryn finished a sweep to the center stream, exchanged a fast wave with John as he appeared on the opposite bank, and headed back toward Chiana.  “Rygel.  Anything?” she asked.

“Four megra-fahrbot lunatics in a mud bowl.”

“Faugh!”  D’Argo’s cry of dismay added to the constant chatter over the comms.  “I take it all back, Your Flatulence.  You smell like a Sebacean wild rose even on your worst day.”

“Hey!  Anybody see anything move across the moon?” Chiana cried suddenly.  “Like a big shadow?”

“Nothing, Chi.  What’ve you got?” John called urgently.

Aeryn worked a little faster to her left, trying to pick out the glow of Chiana’s body in the woods beyond the next stream.

“What the frell was that?”  Chiana’s demand voiced nervous alarm, not an inquiry.  “Hey guys?  There’s something moving around over here, but I can’t see anything.”

D’Argo’s concern broke into the chatter.  “Chiana, move toward Aeryn.  Be careful.”

“Aeryn, can you see her?” John asked more quietly.

The harsh bark of a pulse weapon echoed across the watery flats, one shot blending into the next in a rolling ripple of noise as someone ahead of her pulled the trigger with desperate speed.  “Chiana’s firing!” Aeryn yelled, and moved toward the bright flashes just inside the tree line.  A scream tore through the night, a high pitched yowl of pain and fear, and Aeryn abandoned all caution.  She slithered down the stream bed, splashed through waist deep water and scrambled through the hummocks of grass, closing on Chiana’s last position in a matter of microts.

“Chiana!”  John’s voice ripped through the night, momentarily eliminating the need for the comms.  “Aeryn, can you see her?”

“Not yet.”  She moved into the trees, swinging her head side to side to scan with the night lens.

A whine moved past her head at high speed as Rygel whizzed overhead.  “Something moving to your right, Aeryn,” came the shouted warning.  “Watch out to your right!”

She spun around in time to see a huge looming shadow moving away from her along the smallest of the streams, a bulky black object that seemed to float effortlessly across the mud and tussocks.  She fired, seven or eight shots hitting it squarely but effecting no change in its progress.

“Aeryn,” Rygel’s voice interrupted her.  “Chiana’s directly upstream from where you are now.”

“Chiana!”  John’s repeated shouts brought no response.

“Chiana!”  D’Argo’s desperate bellow joined the chaos.

Aeryn tucked the rifle under her arm and sloshed upstream, ignoring the shower of mud and water as she chose the faster route up the center of the waterway.  A muted glow appeared to one side, draped over the edge of the embankments  She scrambled through the thicker mud to get to Chiana.

“Aeryn?”  John and D’Argo called at the same time.

She ignored them as she gently turned the slim figure over, trying to make sense of the two sets of colors and images flooding into her brain, trying to make sense of what she knew she was looking at and couldn’t accept.

“For the love of …”  Aeryn slung her rifle over her shoulder and struggled to lift the injured Nebari.

“I’m on my way, Aeryn.  How bad is it?”  John was panting, footsteps splashing rapidly in the background as he called to her.

“She’s been gutted, John.  That thing cut her entire midsection open.”  She staggered to her feet, boots sinking deep into the muck under their combined weight.  “Rygel, what’s my fastest way out of here?  We have to get her back to Vossmarr.”

The Throne Sled sailed out of the dark to hover to her left, pivoting one way then the other as the Dominar surveyed their surroundings.  “That way, Aeryn.”  He pointed downstream.  “The walkway is about twenty five motras downstream, then turn left.”

“I’ll meet you at the boardwalk and give you a hand, Aeryn,” John called.

She pressed the blue smeared body to her chest and reserved her breath for running.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

D’Argo fought his way through a thicket of slender young trees, smashing and hacking at the foliage with his Qualta blade as he hurried to join Crichton.  The wall of growth gave way before him and he lunged into a stagnant pool of water and rotting leaves.  The oily scum of detritus and bacteria dampened the bow wave as he surged through the chest deep water and forged back onto more solid ground.

He heard Crichton calling to Aeryn over the comms, racing to meet her at the walkway, and felt powerless to help.  His position on the far side of the marsh put him out of range to be of any assistance.  D’Argo cursed quietly as he crashed through the undergrowth, the Luxan profanity aimed entirely at his own recent behavior.

He had relented enough to offer Chiana his friendship and physical strength when they were struggling to save Pilot and Moya from Neeyala’s crew, but he hadn’t told her how he truly felt.  He hadn’t told her how much he still loved her, and how much she would always mean to him even if their passionate physical relationship had ended.  He couldn’t lose her now, not until he had a chance to tell her.  “Hurry, John!” he called over the comms, lending the only support possible.

The arching outline of the foot bridge loomed ahead, a dark hemispherical lump that showed dimly against the night sky when viewed without the night lens.  D’Argo glanced down to pick a drier route through the roots and fallen branches, and when he glanced up again, the smooth arc of the bridge had moved to the right.  He snarled, realizing belatedly that he wasn’t close enough to the bridge to see it yet.  The firing mechanism of his Qualta rifle sprang out of the hilt, released by fingers that had practiced the motion thousands of times, and he swung the heavy weapon up even as he backed away, trying to give himself more time.

“D’Argo?” John called.  “You okay?”

“It’s here, John!  The Nezzie is here!”  The dark shape moved in on him, not registering at all against the retina of the eye behind the night lens.  D’Argo pulled the trigger and the blast tore into the dark shape, vaporizing a dimly seen protrusion.  “Frelling …”  Luxans had a word for such a foul smelling creature, but he didn’t have time between the thought and the moment when its bulk ran into him to pronounce the word.

“Big D!”  John’s voice was receding, moving away from him as the cold touch of the creature struck at him.  D’Argo used the last of his strength to raise his weapon, placing the sharp dual points against his attacker and pulling the trigger again and again.  His rifle was jerked out of his grasp and he was flung sideways into the lumpy hummocks of marsh grass.  John’s voice was fading further away even as his human friend yelled louder, and he could only think that it was a good thing that both Crichton and Aeryn were going to help Chiana because he wanted her to live.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

John boosted himself up onto the boardwalk, water and mud sheeting off him, and turned right, toward D’Argo’s last roars of pain and anger.  “Can you get her back without me, Aeryn?”

“Yes,” came the strained, panting voice.  “Go.”

The comms were still active, so he could hear Aeryn’s clattering footsteps change to quieter thuds as she left the boardwalk and started along the earthen path, but he could also hear Aeryn’s labored breathing and Chiana’s own nearly silent moans through the injured Nebari’s comms.

“Frelling mess,” he complained, ignoring the fact that everyone could hear him.  “Go gator hunting, should’ve been ready to catch gators.”  He accelerated as the mud was knocked off the soles of his boots, and his footing on the worn boards became more certain.  “D’Argo?  D’Argo!  Where are you, Big Guy?”

John ran to the slight elevation offered by the bridge over the last of the streams, and peered left and right, checking both sides of the walkway.  He cupped a hand over his unaugmented eye, struggling to cope with the dual vision, and then swung around in a circle, scanning with the night lens only.  “Rygel, I need some help over here.”

“He’s gone ahead to get help, John.”  Aeryn’s voice bounced and jerked from the strain of her efforts.

“Shit!”  John deactivated his comms.  “D’Argo!  Come on, man.  Moan, hiss, snarl,” he yelled into the night.  “Belch if you have to.  Something!  Tell me where you are.”  A quiet noise eased out of the mud and grass upstream from the bridge.  John vaulted over the railing of the bridge, dropping into thigh deep water, and forged toward the noise.

“Snarl again, D’Argo.”  It wasn’t a snarl, it was a near-silent exhalation, but it was enough.  John clambered toward the noise, lunging through the grass and water until his night vision lens portrayed the eerie glow of a living body lying prostrate in the tussocks near the trees.  “Ahhh, shit!”  He went down on his knees beside his stricken friend.

Crichton stared with disbelief at the same sight Aeryn had struggled to comprehend.  The Luxan’s belly had been ripped open, organs sliced and smashed, blood and internal fluids sheeting out to soak into torn clothing and stain the grass around him.  John tried once with the night lens, and again with normal vision, but couldn’t see whether the blood was running dark or clear.  And there was too much of it.

“Johhhnnn,” D’Argo breathed.

“Hang on, D.  Don’t quit on me.”  He ran his hand through the stream of gore and held it up in the fading moonlight.  Dark black dripped across pale skin.  John stared down at the damaged body and couldn’t envision himself hitting that horrible wound hard enough to make the blood run clear.

“Aeryn?”  He called, seeking help with the decision.  “Aeryn!?”  He remembered that he’d turned his comms off, and reactivated the unit.  “Aeryn!”  Still no answer.  He assumed she’d reached the town and had turned her comms off while they hurried to save Chiana.

“D’Argo, what do I do here?  I can’t hit this.  I can’t possibly hit this.”  There was no answer from the body in front of his knees.

“John, how’s D’Argo?”  Aeryn’s voice broke into his dilemma.

“Bad.”  A clammy chill left him shivering as the relief from having her advice available swamped over him.  “Aeryn, this is so bad, but the blood is black.  What do I do?”

“If he bleeds, he may die.  If the blood doesn’t run clear, he will die.”

The answer sounded so simple, drifting disembodied into the night air.  May die.  Will die.  Just hit it hard enough.  John stared at the hideous injury and couldn’t get himself to move.  He was vaguely aware of Aeryn’s voice calling to him, but the words made no impression on his mind as he began to panic.

‘My fault again.’  The thought surfaced unbidden, ripped viciously into his soul.  ‘Another life.’

Next time, I’ll make sure I’m the one who jumps in front of the runaway train

She’s right, D’Argo.  I keep getting people hurt or killed

Let’s see how John Lafitte, Curse of the Uncharted Territories has done so far

‘My fault again.  Another life.’  John stared at his dying friend, the capacity for action destroyed by his guilt and panic.

“You should have shot that shadow when you had the chance, John.”  Harvey wandered to his side wearing fishing waders and a brimmed hat covered with fly fishing lures.

“Shut up, Harvey.  This isn’t the right time for recriminations.”  John stood shivering in the creek, dungarees and flannel shirt soaked and hanging heavy on his chilled body.

“Not the right time?  But that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?”  The clone plucked a fly off his hat and began fastening it to the end of some fishing line.  “You saw the creature moving toward Ka D’Argo’s position and did nothing.  You deluded yourself into believing that the Ashrei’s claims were false, and that this creature was misunderstood and harmless.  And that delusion has cost your friend his life.”  The black-clad clone awkwardly whipped a fly rod back and forth, nearly hooking John with the lure, and then sinking it deep into the seat of his own waders on its next pass.

“You place your obsession above the lives of your friends.”

D’Argo’s accusation seemed to ring all around them as John stood next to Harvey, his teeth chattering with cold -- an accusation made only days earlier.

“It wasn’t the creature,” John insisted desperately.  He’d seen the lurking shadow move past him during his first trek toward the lake, a dark mass traveling along the small stream that lay between his area and D’Argo’s.  He’d aimed the pulse rifle, but despite having a clear shot he’d  chosen not to pull the trigger, convinced that the Nessie wasn’t the real threat.  “It couldn’t have been the critter.  It couldn’t have gotten over to Chiana and back to D’Argo again from where I saw it.  Not in that length of time.”

The clone disentangled himself from the hook and tried again, managing a credible cast into the unseen distance.  “If you had pulled the trigger, perhaps now you would have two trophy heads to hang on the wall of your quarters, instead of two dead companions.”  He cranked the fishing line in, dragging two fish flapping and flopping into view.

The revelation jerked John out of his guilt-driven panic.  He stared down at the exposed innards of his friend, the pale moonlight illuminating the coiling rivulets where black and clear blood mixed and flowed together.  He took a deep breath.  “How do I hit him hard enough?  I’m not strong enough.”

“A Qualta blade has an edge and a flat side.”  The smooth, uncaring voice of the clone spoke eerily into his mind.

John jumped to his feet and scanned all around him, searching for the weapon.  “Where’d you drop it, D’Argo?  Where is it?”  He worked quickly from side to side, concentrating on the area between D’Argo’s body and the watercourse, concluding that the Nessie would have attacked him close to the stream.  There was the glint of pale moonlight reflecting on something at the edge of the woods.  Crichton pounced on the weapon.  Fumbling hands rearranged the hilt, converting the rifle back into a sword, and microts later he stood over his friend, carefully aligning the flat side of the blade with the wound.

“Forgive me.”  Crichton closed his eyes for an instant, took a deep breath, and hit his friend as hard as he could.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“John Crichton, stop!  Stop!  Your companion is wounded, stop this.”  Hands pulled his panting, sweating body away from D’Argo, yanked the Qualta blade out of his grasp, and pushed him aside.  John stumbled, tripped over a hummock and felt into several inches of swamp water.  “Why do you do this?”  Vossmarr crouched over the fallen Luxan, a large handlight trained on his belly wound.

“The blood,” John gasped, fighting to catch his breath.  “What color is the blood?”

“It is mostly colorless, tinged with some black.”  Vossmarr’s fingers were questing rapidly into the wound, disappearing up to the slim wrists.  “This is very bad.”

“No shit.”  John took a deep breath and rolled to his knees.  “Black blood is poison, clear blood is okay.  Is he still bleeding black?”

Vossmarr looked over his shoulder briefly, his face made cadaverous by the shadows spilling from the handlight.  He peered into the wound, exploring with one hand while he laid the fingers of the other against the side of D’Argo’s head.  “It is … all clear blood.”  He closed his eyes, leaving the second hand in place as he concentrated.  “There is no poisoning in his system, only injury.”

John didn’t stop to question how Vossmarr was performing the diagnosis; he staggered to his feet and stumbled back to D’Argo’s side.  “Come on, we have to get him back before he bleeds to death.”

“Can you carry him alone?  In your arms?”  Crichton watched as Vossmarr’s dexterous fingers entered and closed the wound simultaneously.  Four thumbs met four index fingers, pulling the edges of the gaping opening together while the remaining six fingers sank deep inside, pressing on organs, stemming damage’s clear tide.  The flow slowed and then stopped.

John looked at D’Argo’s bulk.  His friend had carried him on several occasions, hefting his own substantial weight as if it were no burden whatsoever.  But Luxans were significantly heavier than humans.  Vossmarr was waiting, his attention still focused on his newest patient.

John thought of Tocot’s frigid surgery, warmed only by D’Argo’s fierce insistence that he keep fighting when he thought he’d lost everything and wanted to die.  D’Argo had brought him back much as Zhaan had brought Aeryn back, but at less cost to himself … until now.

“I can carry him.”

* * * * *

Interlude

He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten into the strange maze, but that wasn’t the detail that was bothering him.  The walls were uniform -- as they were in all mazes -- one identical arcing length of golden metallic wall melting into the next, bending and twisting until he didn’t know which turnings he had explored, and which ones he hadn’t.  But that didn’t bother him either.

It was the voice that plagued him.  It called his name repeatedly, the calm pleasant tones bouncing through the softly lit corridors, sometimes louder, sometimes fading until he almost lost its beacon behind the rumbles that never stopped.  He would follow it faithfully through a half dozen intersections only to have the source suddenly shift, leaving him lost and confused.

He didn’t like this place.  It wasn’t like the other places he’d found himself in recently.  The floor shifted and pitched, and the rumbling made it hard for him to think.  He’d recognized his surroundings every time before, but this place was alien to him.  He wasn’t scared.  The maze made him feel surprisingly safe and secure, but there were too many unknowns floating in his head, and the voice wouldn’t allow him any time to think.

John Crichton slid down the wall to sit on the warm floor, his head in hands, fatigue providing the sound dampener that finally allowed him to ignore the summons.  He was tired.  Too tired to continue.  He folded his arms around his aching stomach, rested his head on his knees, and let the darkness of exhaustion sweep in to carry him away.  He heard the call again as he faded, more strident, more demanding.  He couldn’t be bothered to answer.  He was too tired.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Part 4

Aeryn walked out of the small healing center, squinting as she stepped into the silvery morning sunlight.  The medical facility was airy and bright inside, but she’d spent the remainder of the night inside, and her eyes weren’t prepared for the natural light, no matter how diffuse.  She slid down the wall to sit on the ground beneath the slanting roof that protruded from the front of the building.  There were several chairs and benches scattered there to provide seating for waiting relatives, but she found it more comforting to sit with her back against the cool ceramic wall and her knees tucked up against her chest.

“How are they?”  John was lying on his back on one of the benches, precariously balanced on the narrow surface.  He hadn’t changed, and his clothes were stiff with mud and blood, which was why he hadn’t been allowed inside the building.

Aeryn opened her mouth, but no noise came out.  She cleared her throat and tried again.  “Chiana will recover.  D’Argo’s alive.”  She rubbed her hands together, trying to remove the last of the blue stains from her palms.  Nebari blood was more tenacious than that of other species, she decided, rubbing at a knuckle.  “First time,” she said quietly.  First time she’d ever come in contact with the blue life source -- or that volume of it, at least.

“What did you say?”  John rolled off the bench and stood up, stretching.

“Nothing.”  She looked up at him.  “You should go get cleaned up.  Aksal left some clean clothes for you.  I’ll get them.”

“Don’t bother.  I left D’Argo’s Qualta blade out there.  I want to go get it first.”  John walked to the edge of the sheltered area and leaned against one of the pillars, making no move to begin his errand.  He stretched left and right, then settled back against the upright.

“You carried D’Argo all the way back.  Without resting.”  Aeryn leaned her head back against the wall, and wondered how soon she could find a place to lie down and get some sleep.

“Yup.  No biggie.”  He sighed.  “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”  He shifted slightly, easing his shoulders with a motion that was too familiar to an ex-Peacekeeper who’d suffered through more exercise-damaged muscles than she could count.  “Where’s Rygel?”

“He said something along the lines of not becoming an appetizer for the creature and took the second transport back to Moya.”  Aeryn got to her feet and moved to stand next to him.  She ran her hand firmly down John’s back.

“Ouch,” he admitted.

“Get Aksal to take care of it.”  Vossmarr was watching over D’Argo.  No one knew yet whether his vigil would end in joy or grief.

“It’s just stiff muscles.  There’s no damage.”  John sighed.  “This was my idea, Aeryn.  I’m the one who set this up.”  He gazed out over the distant marsh where the events he’d set in motion had come to their culmination.  “Someone else is paying again.”  They were her words, but it was the source of the guilt that had him glued to one spot, unable to move forward physically or mentally.

“We all had our chance to turn back.  You walked out of Command, giving us the chance to go somewhere else.  Coming here wasn’t your fault.  D’Argo and I argued to go into the marshes when you wanted to stay on the walks.  That part wasn’t your fault.”  She followed his gaze toward the marshes.  “This isn’t your fault, John.”

He almost told her then.  He almost admitted that he had let the thing get past him, but he couldn’t bring himself to confess his monumental error in judgment.

He had stood in the maintenance bay just days earlier, arguing over the fate of Pilot and Moya, and Stark had asked him, ‘What have these strangers done to so earn your trust?’ when he’d been willing to abandon their gentle host in favor of transferring to the Pathfinder ship.  Crichton stared out at the marshes and tried to figure out how he had once again convinced himself that an obvious threat was benign.

“This wasn’t your fault, John.”  Aeryn repeated the phrase when he didn’t say anything.

Next time, I’ll make sure I’m the one who jumps in front of the runaway train.

He hadn’t done it.  His lack of action had placed D’Argo and Chiana squarely in the path of disaster instead, leaving him to run impotently but safely through the mud after they’d been smashed by the locomotive.

“I need to find D’Argo’s Qualta blade,” he told her.  “He’ll want it when he wakes up.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

John lowered himself to sit on the edge of the wooden walkway, taking a few moments to look at the remnants of their footprints in the few areas of firmer ground below.  Most of the heavy gouges had disappeared, the viscous mud flowing into the depressions to erase the tale of their frantic movements in the dark, but a few signs of desperate scrambling remained.  It seemed like a nightmare now, a surreal journey through disjointed images linked only by the common theme of darkness and damp.

“You’re traveling through another dimension,” he chanted, deepening his voice.  “A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of … mud.  Deep, dark, mysterious mud that holds god only knows what.”  John sighed and slid into the blackish water.  It had been easier in the dark.  He hadn’t known what he was wandering through then.  He followed the sporadic footsteps upstream, found the heavy gouges where he’d scrambled up into the grass, and cut off at what he thought was the same angle he’d followed last night.  He ran into a huge pool of greenish water instead.  “Well, that ain’t it,” he griped.

He worked back to his tracks, surveyed the outline of the treetops, and tried a tangent leading toward a tall cluster of leaves that looked familiar.  He worked from one mound of foliage to another, hopping across a labyrinth of black muck with a foul, oily scum of rotting vegetation shimmering on the surface.  He couldn’t quite believe he’d slithered through the sludge the night before, sometimes on his belly, sometimes on his hands and knees, but when he looked down at the carapace that had dried on his clothes, he concluded that it was the same material.

“Hooooeeee.  Good Cajun potluck.  W’one hun’red percaint garranteeeeed!”  He bounded across a particularly bilious looking puddle, trying for a large mound of marsh grass, but his mud caked foot slipped off the hummock as he landed.  John dropped awkwardly into the puddle, arms waving wildly for balance, almost caught himself, and splashed belly first into a reddish custard of mud and rotting grass.  His hand caught something warm and firm as he pulled himself out of the mud, and he looked up into another set of eyes.

He yelped and rolled away, startled beyond rational thought.  He pushed himself to his knees and looked more carefully at what he’d found.  Then he turned away, crawled to an area of firmer ground, and threw up.

He glanced at his find when he finished retching, testing his ability to hold his now empty stomach in check.  When nothing else clamored for ejection, John pulled off his vest and shirt, and wrapped the item into a bundle.  He covered it with his shirt first, then fastened his vest around it again, numb hands taking their time buckling it into a tidy package.

He found himself obsessively tucking and straightening the black shirt beneath the vest, making sure the wrapping was smoothly perfect, and had to shake himself physically to get his hands to stop.  He spat a surge of acid into the weedy growth, then gathered his discovery to his chest and began picking his way back to the walkway.  Three steps later, his foot kicked something that leapt away from him with a metallic clang.  John hoisted the Qualta blade with one hand, cradling his other burden in the crook of his arm as though he were carrying a baby, and walked slowly out of the marsh.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Aeryn was headed toward the healing center to check on Chiana and D’Argo when she spotted John walking slowly toward the village.  She noted the fresh layer of mud, and stepped through the door of the building to get the clothes Aksal had left for him.  John’s posture and slow gait registered late, and brought her to an abrupt halt before she got any further than the entryway.  She stepped back to the door to look at him again.  Something was terribly wrong; she could tell even from a distance.

“Aksal!  Vossmarr?  Can someone come here?” she called down the hallway.  The distress in her tone was more than she had intended to convey, but it had the desired result.

Vossmarr hurried out of one of the rooms, wiping his hands on the long front skirt of his tunic.  “What is the matter, Aeryn Sun?”

“Something’s wrong with John.”  She beckoned to him, and they hurried out of the building together.  Vossmarr’s long gliding gait carried him toward the approaching human as quickly as Aeryn’s jog, both of them alarmed by the stumbling, almost blind progress toward the building.

“John!” she called ahead, worried enough to abandon her usual reserve.

His head came up slowly, like some sort of mortally stricken creature.  The hollow haunted look was back in his eyes -- the look she’d seen when he was facing the truth about the neural chip that was taking control, the look she’d seen when he’d watched Zhaan step onto the bridge of the Pathfinder ship, and the look she’d seen for a brief flash on the ice planet when he’d looked into her eyes and thought she was an illusion.

John’s gaze switched to Vossmarr.  “You said the last person the creature took was a child.”  He handed Aeryn the Qualta blade and used the free hand to pull the vest and shirt away from one end of his bundle.

“Menri,” Vossmarr sang quietly.  “Oh, my little man, Menri.”  He cradled John’s package in his arms, huddling over it.

“This is why you asked us to kill that thing in trade.  This is why you’re the one who contacted us, instead of one of your bureaucrats.”  John’s voice was a whisper as the Ashrei nodded, clutching the small body to his chest.

“He was my cousin.”  Vossmarr fingered one of the few wet tufts of hair that could be seen between the folds of the shirt.  “Oh, my little brother, you would have been one of the great healers.  They told me so.  Your family misses you so much, Menri.”  He turned toward the healing center, still singing to his lost cousin.  “You will be consecrated as an Aleph, my little man.  I will see to it.  They’ve already agreed that you may lie alongside the great ones at the Center.  Everyone will know who you were.”

John stared dry-eyed at the receding pair -- one tall and alive, the other a small fragment of memory.  “I need to kill something,” he said flatly.  His voice rose to an agonized pitch as he continued.  “What kind of thing does that?  What would do that to a child and then … and leave it … and just … what kind of thing?”   The figure was still hunched over its burden as it disappeared into the building.  “I need to kill something.” John summarized.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Let me ask you something.”  John placed one foot on the railing and tipped back in his chair.  He was finally clean, dressed in the same flowing Ashrei clothes that Aeryn wore, enjoying the late afternoon sun from beneath the roofed porch in front of Sellimarr’s home.  “You saw that thing moving down the stream.”  Aeryn nodded.  “If that critter could move, say, twice as fast as what you saw -- or even three times as fast -- could it have gotten from where you found Chiana, all the way down to the lake, and then back up to D’Argo in the time between the two attacks?”

Aeryn thought about it for several microts.  “I wouldn’t think so.”

“So it either flew …”  He anticipated her reaction and shook his head just as she did.  “Or it cut across the marsh from side to side …”

“That would certainly have taken even longer,” Aeryn scoffed.

“Or …”  He waited for her to make the jump to the conclusion that he would never have formulated without Harvey.

“Or there are TWO of those things.”

“Yes.  Thing Number One and Thing Number Two.”

“Or more.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”  He considered it for a while.  “I don’t think so.  If there were more than two, why didn’t they take us all out last night?  God knows they had the chance.  They could have gotten us all down by the lake on the first pass if there were more.”

“You still want to go after these Nessie things,” she stated.  “You haven’t changed your mind.”  She studied his reaction carefully.

“More than ever.”  John was aware of her stare, but continued to gaze into the distance.  He still hadn’t confessed to her that he’d had a chance to shoot one of the creatures last night, but decided that this was a bad time to tell her that he’d seen the vague shape moving upstream.  That sight contributed to his certainty that there was only a pair.  He was positive that the creature he’d seen moving was the one that had gotten D’Argo.  Thing #2, he labeled it in his mind.  The timing and location matched up perfectly.  If there were more than two, he probably would have seen another one traveling with Thing #2.

“What’s your plan?” she asked.

“What I think is my plans stink.  My plan is to -- listen to you.”  He hit the first two rhymes inadvertently.  “I’ll shut up and follow you, so we can kill Things One and Two.  I want to fry them down to the bone, and send the Cat In The Hat home alone.”  Aeryn favored him with her special ‘make-sense’ frown.  “It’s called ‘Seussin’, and it’s an art form.”

“If that’s an art form on Earth, I’m definitely never visiting.”  Aeryn looked up at the porch rafters, reaching back into her extensive Peacekeeper training in order to marshal their meager information into some sort of pattern.  “I have to come up with the plan this time,” she mused.  “These creatures are like your Nessie, why don’t you come up with a way to kill them?”

“Because I never hunted Cecil the Sea Serpent, and because the last time I had a plan, you used words like ‘never work’ and ‘idiot’.”  Crichton made a grumbling sound in the back of his throat.  “Idiot,” he repeated, sounding hurt.

“I don’t think trapping or luring these things is going to work.  And we don’t have enough people to try another nighttime engagement.”  She slid into military terms as she considered their problem, ignoring his complaint. “The only thing left would be an assault of some sort.”

“Go after them.”  John looked toward the marsh, considering what was beyond it.  “They live in a lake, Aeryn.”

“Didn’t you just say you’d shut up and follow me?”  She smiled as he clamped his mouth shut.  “We can’t search the entire lake,” she voiced her thoughts out loud.  “So our first problem is figuring out where they live in the lake.”

“No, our first problem is that we can’t breathe underwater.”  His feet dropped off the railing with a thump.  “I’ll go talk to Aksal.  Maybe he and Vossmarr have some brainiac friends who could help with that part.”

“Pilot?” Aeryn called after activating her comms.  “Maybe Moya can help with the first part,” she said as Crichton went inside.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Vossmarr, Aksal and Sellimarr had joined them in the long family room where the first meeting had taken place.  John was letting Aeryn and Rygel pour over the schematics that Pilot had produced from Moya’s survey of the lake while he examined the breather system that Aksal’s friends had come up with.

“It seems a bit bulky,” he observed, hefting the system.

“Not once you get it on,” Aksal said enthusiastically.  He slid into the backpack arrangement, demonstrating how the chemical scrubber hugged his spine from neck to hips, moving with him as he moved around the room.  “I told them you would probably be in a fight, so they built the rest with that in mind.”  He jammed a helmet down on his head and demonstrated how the breathing mask, air lines, and face shield all fit tightly together.  Aksal continued to talk inside the mask, his voice muffled into incomprehensibility but the black eyes shining with obvious pride in his friends’ speedy innovation.

John tried to snag the air lines, pulling at them to see if they could be ripped loose, but they fit tightly against the Ashrei’s neck, feeding into the mask seamlessly.  Aksal’s technician friends had successfully placed the vital tubing in a spot where the Things would probably rip his throat out before they left him without air.  Aksal pulled the mask away, “They’ll fit a set to each of you.”  His grin died away.  “Just two of you are going to go after them?”

John looked across to where Aeryn was hunched over the schematics.  She met his gaze, having overheard the question.  “Stark can’t be found, and … Jool?”  The judgment remained unspoken.

Vossmarr stood in a corner, black eyes watching the planning.  One hand slid up, and he chewed lightly on the pad of his anterior-thumb.  Aeryn looked at him speculatively, watching the unconscious behavior, and then looked across at where Crichton was testing the connections of mask to helmet.  She went back to watching Vossmarr’s slow worrying of his thumb.

He noticed her stare and jerked his hand down, rubbing the two thumbs against each other.  “Apologies.  A very old and unpleasant habit, I fear.  I am, perhaps, a bit distracted this evening.”

“You don’t have to be here, Vossmarr.  Aksal is helping us enormously.”  The Aleph looked as gloomy as his uncle, and neither had offered anything into the planning as yet.

“Your friend, Ka D’Argo, is doing better than anyone ever would have envisioned.  My presence …”

“I was referring to your cousin,” her gentle tone halted his assurance, “and your son, Sellimarr.  You’re entitled to some time to mourn your loss.”

Sellimarr stepped closer to the table.  “We are the ones who asked the central authority to notify us if anyone meeting our requirements contacted the planet.  We initiated this, therefore we must participate in its conclusion.  There will be adequate time for grief when this is over.  How may we assist?”

“You already have,” Rygel responded.  “By offering your gracious hospitality.”

“Perhaps …” Aeryn looked across at John and thought of his emotional swings during the day, and the guilt he’d been voicing earlier.  The symptoms were the same ones that had preceded his nighttime wanderings aboard Moya.  She stepped closer to Vossmarr and lowered her voice.  “Perhaps you could make sure Mafflelle finds her way into John’s lap later tonight.”

He smiled broadly.  “I will find her now to make sure she does not wander.”

“I believe I may have something here, Aeryn.”  Rygel’s stubby finger rested on what appeared, at first, to be a blemish on the survey schematic.  The entire group leaned over the transparency.

“What is that?”  John lifted the Hynerian’s hand to get a better look.

Aeryn leaned closer to see what Rygel had found.  “That’s a pile of rocks.  The only rocks anywhere on the bottom of the lake, and the scan shows that it might be hollow inside.  Well done, Rygel.  I might have missed that.”

John peered at the blemish, trusting their skilled interpretation of the jumble of symbols.  He was better with the schematics of Moya’s systems.  “Think we should knock before entering?”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Anything else we need to settle tonight?  Or can we work the rest out in the morning?”  John leaned away from the table and stretched his back.

The remains of the dinner provided by Sellimarr’s wife were pushed into an untidy corner of the table, together with a pile of discarded schematics which Aeryn and Rygel had deemed useless.  The group was ranged around one end of the long table with the one remaining survey, the breather equipment, and several pulse rifles laid out between them.

“I hit Thing Number One last night,” Aeryn said pensively.  She picked up a pulse rifle and ejected the chakan oil cartridge.  “I hit it several times and it didn’t slow down.”

John rocked forward, his chair settling with a loud crack against the hard floor.  “You picked a fine time to bring that up.”

“I didn’t remember until just now,” she snapped at him.  “I had a few other things on my mind last night.”

“What about D’Argo’s rifle?” Rygel interjected, trying to distract the pair from their instant antagonism.

John flapped his hands and let them fall back to the table.  “No one knows except D’Argo.  That thing’s too heavy for me to want to take it underwater, anyway.  Aeryn?”  She shook her head.  “What else do we have on board Moya?” he prompted.

“Tarak Deployer, grenades, the larger pulse rifle.”  She stopped, gaze vacant as she thought about their limited supply of weaponry.

“Rocks, sticks, spears,” John ran off in a litany.  “You?” he looked at the three Ashrei.  They simply smiled at him.  “Didn’t think so.”  He turned back to Aeryn’s unfocused stare.  “What happens when you fire a pulse weapon underwater?”  The question felt like he was leading into a bad joke, along the lines of ‘Why did the chakan oil cartridge cross the road?’

Her eyes looked into the distance, shifting from side to side as she searched her memory.  “I’m not sure anyone’s ever tried it.  I don’t remember it being covered during training, but that might mean that it works normally.  We trained for amphibious assaults, but only to get onto dry land.”  Aeryn turned the chakan oil cartridge over in her hands, examining it for several microts, then slid it back into the rifle.  “I don’t know what will happen.”

Everyone sat silently, looking glumly at the weapons and equipment on the table, their plans derailed at the last moment by an oversight.  John fingered the breather, thinking about how war was waged on his own planet.  Technology was a wonderful thing, but so many heroic acts had been performed with the most minimal of supplies.  Fingers, brains, courage.  The pulse rifles might work.

I’m not your kind of hero, Dad.

He looked at Aeryn out of the corners of his eyes, peeking carefully to check the expression on her face.  She was staring at him.  “I’m willing to try it anyway,” he admitted.  Her smile left him feeling lightheaded.  It was the one she only seemed to bestow on him when he did something a Peacekeeper would be proud of, but he didn’t care.  He knew he’d willingly jump right off a cliff if she promised to smile at him like that as he went over the edge.  John dragged his thoughts back to the discussion with an effort.  “How about we do a test fire as soon as we get underwater, and beat feet if they don’t go off correctly?”

“Sounds like a good idea,” she said softly, still smiling.

John turned back to the Ashrei.  “You don’t have weapons, but you must harvest grain or cut grass or chop down trees somehow, right?”  Nods.  “Can one of your people come up with something REALLY sharp along one edge, about this long,” his hands indicated the desired distance, “with a handle for two hands?”

“A sword?” Rygel burst out.  “You want to go up against those things with a sword?”

“It’s for you to carry when you come along, Sparky,” John kidded.  “Actually it’s a backup.  Winona and swords don’t misfire.  And I can make seafood shish kabobs if I get bored.”

The discussion ground to a halt as they decided they’d resolved everything possible until morning.  Sellimarr disappeared to close up the heavy shutters that every house in the village had installed when the inhabitants began to fear attacks in their own homes, while the rest of them cleaned up the detritus from their meal, and arranged the bench-like alcoves for sleeping.  Aksal said his farewells and disappeared toward his own home.

John sat on the edge of one of the bunks looking indecisive.  He’d made no move to remove his boots, leading Aeryn to suspect that he was already anticipating spending the night awake.  She didn’t like deceiving him to get him to sleep, but she knew that her life would depend on his reactions the following day, which dispelled the last of her hesitancy.

Every plan she’d formulated for getting him into the alcove with the feltisk was discarded in a matter of microts when Mafflelle came bounding down the stairs into the room, six legs flying in an excited flurry.  The cub stopped at the bottom of the stairs, viewing the room and its occupants carefully before charging under the table and out the other side to leap playfully at Rygel’s hovering Throne Sled.  The Dominar let out a brief cry and steered himself closer to the ceiling.  “Predator,” he accused.

“Come here, fur ball,” John invited.  “You’re not a dog, but you’re cuter than Rocky the Flying Frog up there.”  He scooped the feltisk up in one hand and flopped back onto the padded bench, automatically resuming the position he’d taken the day before -- lying on his back with the cub on his chest.  Mafflelle jumped after his wiggling fingers for seven or eight microts, then abruptly flopped down on his chest and went promptly to sleep.  John yawned, resting his hand on the spotted fur.

Aeryn saw Vossmarr laughing silently as he climbed the stairs out of the gathering room, then she laid down and went to sleep as well.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Interlude

This place was familiar … frighteningly familiar after the disorienting strangeness of the last dozen or so places he’d found himself.  To his left and right, the light-colored walls of the hospital corridor faded into misty nothingness, leaving him suspended in the one remaining segment that held the door.  That door.  He knew who was on the other side of that door, although he’d never walked through it … back then.  He hadn’t been able to walk through it then, and he couldn’t do it now.  John Crichton sat huddled on the floor with his forearms on his knees, lips pressed against his wrist as he stared at the door, and waited for something to change.  It always did.  His world mutated around him endlessly now, an odd collection of realities that confused him.

She was calling his name again, but this time there were two voices merging into the one summons.  There was the higher pitched tone that he had callously ignored back then, and the deeper, more insistent voice, the one he still couldn’t locate and never left him alone.  The first gnawed at him, left him consumed with guilt.  The second was annoying, but reassured him.  It was the single constant in his existence, a welcome irritation.

They called to him again, but the voices were distinctly separate this time.  One voice pleaded with him to enter the room, but he knew what lay behind that smoothly white door.  Death waited there.  The other voice plucked at his interest, inviting him to venture into the unseen areas at the end of the corridor.  He wouldn’t move until he had it figured out.  He glanced from one destination to the other, shifting only his eyes, pondering his choices while the two voices rang endlessly in his mind.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Part 5

The next morning dawned gray and cloudy, occasional rainsqualls drifting across the fields and hills.  John stared out the puddles, gazing at the hypnotic fall of the drops as they slowly detached themselves from the eves of the porch roof to spatter onto the railing.  He closed the door and turned toward where Aeryn was reassembling one of the pulse rifles.

“This is going to make it even darker underwater.  You still good to go?”  He knew better than to even offer his assistance when she was stripping and inspecting weapons.  Anything he did, she would do over, just to make sure the rifle was in perfect condition.

“As long as you’re still sure.”  The second pulse rifle joined the first on the table and she stared intently at where Winona rode on his thigh.

“She never misfires.  She’s very good to me.”  Aeryn continued to stare.  “Fine, check it.”  He relinquished the pulse pistol into her care.  “And, yes, I’m still sure.”

Aeryn pulled the pistol to pieces, inspected and reassembled it in less than five hundred microts.  She was just handing it back to John when there was a loud double rap on the door and Aksal stuck his head into the room.  “May we come in?” he asked eagerly.  “We’ve brought the breathers and something else that should help.”  Before either John or Aeryn could answer, he pushed the door wide and four Ashrei piled into the room behind him, carrying the newly designed equipment.

“I am Niv.”  The first one introduced himself, ducking his upper body as he bowed repeatedly toward John and Aeryn.

“Short for Alsendenivariald,” another offered.  “His parents couldn’t settle on a single name.”

“That’s irrelevant,” Niv snapped at his friend, sounding as though the teasing was a very familiar torment.  “Yesterday, it occurred to us that the ambient temperature of the lake water is colder than most sentient bipedal species can tolerate comfortably.  Your internal bodily thermal conditions might decrease to levels which would impair cognitive processes and physical reactions.”

John stuck a finger in one ear and waggled it.  “Are you an engineer by any chance?”

“Perhaps we should introduce him to Jool,” Aeryn laughed quietly from beside him.

Niv ignored both comments, set a large bundle down on the table and rolled it out.

“Wetsuits!”  John recognized the garments immediately.

“No, no, no.  These will keep you DRY,” another of the group objected.  “Dry and warm.”

John held one of the suits up by the shoulders.  It had been manufactured out of something that looked remarkably like black rubber, and was absolutely seamless except for the opening that ran up the front from hip to shoulder.  “You’ve done this before,” he suggested.

Five faces beamed at him.  “Never,” Aksal proclaimed.  “I told you they were good.”

“You are risking yourselves for us,” one explained.  “We could do no less than our best to help you in your endeavor.”  He stepped away from his friends.  “Elthan,” he introduced himself concisely.  “We wanted to ensure that the suits performed their function correctly, so we spent the night testing them.  They are quite watertight, and release virtually no body heat into the water.”

“You didn’t risk yourselves by going in the lake,” Aeryn objected.

All five Ashrei looked embarrassed.  “You can’t tell anyone,” Aksal said, glancing around the room furtively.  “They tested them in the drinking water cistern.”  They all looked inordinately pleased with themselves despite their unorthodox testing method.

“This looks just like rubber.”  John held the suit up to his body, examining the dimensions, and then passed it to Aeryn.  A similar inspection of the second suit revealed that it matched his body almost perfectly.  “How did you size these?”

“Aksal must have done it,” Aeryn theorized.  “You took our clothes to have the mud cleaned off.”  Heads nodded.

“What is ‘rub-her’?” Niv asked John.

“The word is ‘rubber’,” John corrected, “although your version is a pretty good idea, too.”  Aeryn snorted and glared at him.  “THIS looks and feels like rubber.  On my planet it was originally made from the sap of a particular type of tree, but now it’s produced from chemicals.  Hydrocarbons.”  He wondered if the term would translate for the technicians.

“Then this is not rub-burr.  This is a fungus.”  Elthan fingered the sleeve of John’s suit.  “We manufacture many items out of this life form.  It is a by-product of our livestock farming.  The fungus feeds on the effluvium of …”

“STOP!  Do NOT tell me anymore if you want me to put this thing on.”  John tossed the suit onto the table and wiped his hands on his pants.  “Why do I ever ask?  I should know better than to ask by now.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

John shifted his weight nervously from foot to foot, waiting impatiently outside the healing center for Aeryn to arrive.  She had remained behind with the four technicians to learn about the breather units, while he had gone to collect the sword the metal specialists had produced overnight.  Like the breathers and wetsuits, the weapon was a marvel of hasty engineering -- light, well balanced, and unbelievably sharp.  John had left it with the beaming craftsman, who had begged to be allowed to modify the grip for a better grasp, and had hurried to meet Aeryn.  He was the one who had insisted on visiting Chiana and D’Argo before their assault on the lake creatures, but the brief wait had given him time to think and he was no longer sure he wanted to go inside.

“To protect and serve.”

“Oh god, no.  Not now, Scorpy.  Go away.”  John examined the police uniform he was wearing, brushing a piece of lint off the otherwise spotless blouse.  “What part of my brain have you been exploring this time?  And what gives you the right to wander through my personal storage?”

The clone stomped on the accelerator of the police cruiser and took the next corner on two wheels.  “This is my existence also, John.  The only one left to me.  That gives me the right.”

“Fine.  Say what’s on your mind, then get out.”  John grabbed at the dashboard as they screeched around another corner, all four wheels drifting sideways.  “And who taught you to drive?  Mr. Magoo?”

“Bullitt.  Steve McQueen.  You watched that one eight times,” the clone answered avidly, taking the next two corners even faster.  “To protect Aeryn Sun and serve some sort of penance for your mistake.  That’s what you intend to do now, isn’t it John?”

“Pop psyche.  Give it a rest.”  John stared out the side window morosely.

Scorpius brought the squad car to a skidding, screeching stop next to the curb and shut off the engine.  He turned to face John.  “Putting yourself in harm’s way will serve no purpose, John Crichton.  I object to this plan.  It is too hazardous.”

“Not too long ago, you tried to get me to end it all so you wouldn’t have to endure this miserable existence.”  John slammed his fist against the door panel.  “I don’t have time for this.  Leave me alone, Harvey.”

“One small thing, and then I’ll desist.  I am just beginning to learn about living, John, and I will not allow you to deliberately call retribution down upon yourself just because you can’t live with your own decisions.”

John lunged across the car and grabbed the apparition by his shirt front.  “And how do you intend to stop me?  Assuming I want to stand in front of that runaway train, what are you going to do about it?”

The radio crackled and blared, “One Adam Twelve, come in.”

John stared at the transceiver, dumbfounded.  He looked at the stripes on the sleeves of Harvey’s uniform, his own sleeves, the cruiser’s interior, and the cars parked on either side of the street.  “Adam Twelve?  You’ve got to be kidding me.  Couldn’t you find ANYTHING better than that?”  He shoved the glowering figure away from him and sat back in the passenger seat.  “And you don’t look anything like Pete Malloy.”

“Well, you don’t look anything like Jim Reed,” Harvey sulked.

“No?  Hunh.  Some people said they thought there was a family resemblance.”  John got out of the car and slammed the door, leaning down to talk through the window.  “I have no intention of deliberately getting myself killed, Harv.  This isn’t a suicide mission.  Now get lost!”

“John?”

“Aeryn!”  She’d startled him.

“Talking with Scorpius?”

The last time he’d seen anyone with that look on their face was the night his sister had stepped out the back door of their house and found a rabid raccoon sitting on the top of the trash cans.  It was that same look of horrified wariness.  “No, I’m just talking to myself.  It’s a time-honored tradition among eccentric scientists.”

Aeryn turned away from him immediately.  He felt the weight of the flimsy lie settle on top of the existing guilt, but couldn’t bring himself to call her back and admit the truth.  John followed her into the building, Aeryn’s reaction to his deceit and the clone’s accusations adding to his emotional turmoil.  He needed time to think everything through, but events were pushing him, forcing him to make decisions when he didn’t even know what he was trying to achieve.

“Focus on the immediate.  Kill the critters, solve everything else later,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“Talking to myself again.”  He hurried to join Aeryn at the door to one of the rooms.

She stepped aside and let him enter first.  It was the first time John had been inside the building, and she watched his reaction to their surroundings, allowing herself to see the room a second time as she’d viewed it originally.

The Ashrei believed that a pleasant, natural surrounding enhanced healing, so the long exterior wall consisted of transparent full-height doors that could be folded back to allow fresh air into the room.  The screened opening let out onto trellis-enclosed garden with an intricate ceramic-tiled flooring that held a large table and an assortment of chairs and recliners.  A fabric sunscreen had been unfurled from the side of the building, putting a fluttering roof over the enclosed area, and the entire result was cheerful, airy and relaxing.

Chiana’s bed had been pushed up close to the screens so she could enjoy the fresh air and sunshine and be close to anyone visiting her if they chose to sit in the garden.  Aksal was sitting comfortably in one of the large cushioned chairs inside the room, assisting with the non-stop monitoring the Ashrei were providing the two patients.  John wandered over to look outside briefly, then returned to stand by Chiana’s side.

“Hey, Pip.  How you feelin’?”  His voice was low and rough.  He held her hand in both of his, rubbing her knuckles with a thumb.  The smile he forced into place was fairly convincing, but the underlying sorrow seemed apparent to Aeryn.  She watched Chiana’s reaction to his arrival, concerned that any variety of accusation might drive John further into the depression he’d been struggling through aboard Moya.

“Hey, Old Man.”  The smile and the whisper greeted him enthusiastically, even if they lacked energy.  “I hear you carried D’Argo all the way in by yourself.”  John looked to the Ashrei physician for an explanation.

“It’s a very small building,” Aksal explained, “serving a small population.  It is very rare to have even two patients at the same time, so we were not aware that sound carries rather well from one area to another.”  He pointed at the outer garden area.

“Yeah, Pip,” John answered her.  “He said he didn’t like wading through the mud, so I gave him a lift.”

A single weak laugh eased out of Chiana.  “Then I probably feel better than you do right now, Crichton.”  She grabbed his hand.  “D’Argo’s lucky to have you as a friend.  He might have died if you hadn’t carried him back here.”

The psychological pain caused by her remark was far greater than the discomfort from his stiff, abused muscles.  John blinked hard, willing the tears to recede before they got loose.  “Yeah.  He’s lucky all right.”  If he were any luckier, he’d be dead.  The thought bounced and ricocheted around in his skull, making it difficult to focus on whatever else Chiana was saying.

Aeryn was watching him with the ‘rabid raccoon’ look again.  He forced a smiled back into place.

“We gotta go, Chiana.  We’ll be back after we make some sushi.”

“Crichton?  How’s D’Argo?”  The cheerfulness faded from her expression.  “Aeryn wouldn’t tell me earlier.”

“He’s … uhh …”  John started to turn to check with Aksal, but the hand tugged at his, pulling his attention back.

“Don’t let him die.”  Dark tears streaked down the too-pale gray skin.  “Please don’t let him die, okay?  Tell him for me?  Tell him he’s got to live.  Tell him I’m sorry, and he’s got to live.”

“Chiana, he’s fighting.”  Aeryn moved in to assure her.  “He’s already lived through more than anyone expected, and he isn’t getting any worse.”  The firm, disciplined tones coming from the ex-soldier seemed to calm Chiana better than any platitudes or empty assurances.  The flood of tears ended as the cautiously confident voice continued.  “They won’t let him die.  Vossmarr’s with him right now, and he’ll make sure D’Argo doesn’t give up.”

“Vossmarr’ll make him better.”  A shaky smile was back in place, but she was falling asleep.  “He can make anyone better.”  Her voice trailed off into a mumble.  “Made Crichton go to sleep, make D’Argo better … be better.”

John ran his fingers through the disheveled shock of white hair before following the others into the hallway, softly caressing the back of one unknowing hand before leaving her alone.  “Would you care to explain that ‘sleep’ remark?” he asked outside the room.

“Is D’Argo conscious?” Aeryn asked Aksal, pointedly ignoring John’s question.

“Not yet.  He is very much improved, however.  Luxans are an amazing species.  We contacted the Central Health Authority for advice, and no one there had ever treated a Luxan, but there was an enormous amount of information in storage at the Institute.  Vossmarr is intrigued by your friend’s resilient physiology.”  His enthusiasm echoed off the walls of the corridor as he led them the short distance to D’Argo’s room.

“If he’s not conscious, there’s no purpose in visiting.”  John stopped walking.

“You don’t want to see D’Argo,” Aeryn confirmed.  “You don’t want to talk to him?”  The ‘rabid raccoon’ look was back in place.

He wanted to see D’Argo.  He wanted to see his friend striding down the hallway, voice booming and echoing off the walls.  He wanted to be dragged into the rib-crushing bear hug or have the confident hand clap him on the shoulder in the manner that always sent him staggering halfway across Command.  What he didn’t want to do was see his friend lying near death because of his own stupidity.

“We’re burning daylight.  I’d rather bring D’Argo a seafood surprise with all the trimmings.”  John turned his back on Aksal’s look of dismay and walked out of the building.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Fungal fit.  Measured for mold.  Creepy clothes.  A fungus among us.”  John was chanting quietly as he worked himself into the black protective suit.

“WHAT are you talking about?” Aeryn finally exploded.  She had her back turned as she squirmed into her suit, but turned to look at him as he broke off his non-stop mumbling.

“I’m trying to come up with a term for what these are made from,” he explained.  He wriggled his arms into the sleeves and shrugged the shoulders up into place.  “I tried ‘cryptogamous clothing’, but it just doesn’t have that special ring to it.  You know?”

“You are insane.”  She worked the two edges of the long opening together, pressing hard to make them grab and seal closed.  She noticed John’s avid expression as the process neared her chest, and turned her back.

“Party pooper.”  He finished sealing his own suit and slid into the breather.  “No place for a holster,” he announced, discovering that the harness got in the way of his belt.

“Try going under the harness.”  She watched him unbuckle in order to try again.  “I did some math, and we should get more than two and a half arns of air out of these.”  She began shrugging into her backpack style unit.

“Any more than that, and we’ve probably failed anyway,” John mumbled, snapping his harness closed.  “Two and a half arns, right?”  He began setting the timer the Ashrei technicians had given him.  He wondered if he would have time to even look at the chronometer if they managed to locate their prey.  “Hunter and the hunted,” he said quietly, wondering which would be which when they finally got there.

“Niv said we would get about twenty eight hundred microts out of these …”

“Aeryn, that’s only a little more than an arn,” Crichton blurted incredulously, unable to believe she’d made such an enormous error.

“Twenty eight hundred if you’ve got fourteen fingers is seven thousand for those of us with only ten.”  She chanted each syllable, wiggling her fingers as if he were a small child needing reinforcement.  “They did teach us some rudimentary mathematics in the Peacekeepers, John.”

“Base fourteen, base ten … yeah, I got it,” he muttered in embarrassment.  “Sorry.  I should have trusted that you knew the difference and had it right.”

Aeryn’s fingers froze, two halves of a buckle falling away from each other, stunned by the mumbled apology.  It wasn’t in John’s nature to apologize when he made that kind of erroneous assumption, and it meant that he was less in control of his emotions than she had suspected.  His radical mood swings -- from hilarity with the Niv and the technicians, to near breakdown at Chiana’s bedside, to anguish outside D’Argo’s room, to lighthearted joking as they got ready --  had been the most obvious signal that something was eating at him.  When he had blatantly lied to her about talking to Scorpius though, she’d known for certain that the catastrophic events in the swamp were affecting him as badly as she’d feared they would.

She hesitated as he continued his preparations, on the verge of suggesting that he not go after the creature.  John’s ability to fight effectively had to be questioned if he was acting this uncharacteristically.  She watched the confident motions, the fast expert way he checked Winona one last time, and couldn’t make up her mind.  John was in control of himself, but he wasn’t.  Aeryn knew she couldn’t complete the job by herself; it would be suicidal to even attempt it.

He turned to look at her quizzically.  “You went quiet all of a sudden.  What’s the matter?”  His tone made it more of a demand than a question.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” she ventured carefully.  He frowned at her, obviously puzzled by her sudden change of heart.  “Are you sure you can concentrate on what we have to do?  Can you set everything aside, act unemotionally and decisively, and pull the trigger when you have to?  We’re not going to get any second chances down there with these Nessie things.”

“What’s going on, Aeryn?”

“You seem … distracted.  As if something’s bothering you.”  She tried very hard to tread lightly.

“Something’s bothering me,” he repeated the words.  John slammed the pulse pistol violently into its holster, banging the catch into place with an angry slap.  “I’ll tell you what’s bothering me.  Those …” he struggled to find a word, “… THINGS out there are bothering me.  Those aren’t some poor misunderstood critters swimming around looking for photo ops and scaring tourists for fun.  One of them deliberately stalked Chiana while the other damn near killed D’Argo, and they dismembered some poor little kid who just wanted to get home in time to watch Wagon Train.”

He saw Aeryn’s expression go from concern to annoyance at his terms.  “That poor little guy didn’t even look like an Ashrei of any dimension when I found him, Aeryn.  He’d been ripped apart and left to rot.  Those things aren’t the Loch Ness Monster Twins, they’re Grendel and his Momma at the bottom of the lake terrorizing everyone just because they HATE anything that lives.”

John heard his shouted words ringing inside the small room and managed to lower his voice.  “I’m going down there, Aeryn, and I’m not coming back up until those things are a super-sized calamari meal to go.  This is Seahunt meets Rambo and I’ll pull the trigger on those god damned, water-breathing cousins of Godzilla with the greatest of pleasure.”

He jammed the sword between his suit and the backpack of his breather, checked to make sure the grip was within easy reach, and then picked up his helmet.  “When you blow a hole in those things, see if you can save at least one head so I can hack it off.  I want to mount it on the wall in my quarters.  Are you coming?”  He stalked out of the room without waiting for her reaction.

“Humans.  Frelling stupid humans!”  Aeryn burst out as his footsteps faded.  She was trapped now.  If she didn’t go with him, she knew he was angry enough to try it on his own, and probably die in the process.  John would never agree to stay behind, and she wouldn’t try the attack on her own anyway.  That left only the option of going ahead with the plan, and his outburst only served to confirm her suspicions that he was keeping something bottled up inside.

“Frelling wormholes.  If it weren’t for wormholes, there wouldn’t be humans in this universe.”  She grabbed her equipment and went after him, worried for her own safety, but even more concerned about his.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A group of Ashrei from the village walked with them as far as edge of the fields.  Sellimarr and the quartet of technicians ventured into the trees, but turned back fearfully before they reached the rocky shoreline.  The people without war offered encouragement, and voiced their concern and appreciation for their undertaking, but their dread of the lake creatures was more than they could overcome.

Niv displayed more guilt over his missing capacity for courageous action than any of the others, nervously fussing over the breathers until Aeryn finally snapped at him.  He ducked his head in apology and headed back toward where the rest of the villagers were waiting.

“Do not think badly of us,” Sellimarr entreated.  “It is not that we are cowards.  We simply have no way of contending with these creatures if they should come seeking retribution for your attack.  My nephew and Aksal were forbidden to accompany us today for the same reason.  Everyone fears a reprisal should you fail, and an Aleph cannot be risked.”

“We understand,” Aeryn answered.  “It’s not your fault.  When a person is born to be a certain thing, sometimes there’s no way of turning away from that destiny.”

“We would prefer to be able to protect ourselves.”  Sellimarr still seemed ashamed.  “We would prefer to be more than what our breeding dictates.”  He touched each of them lightly on the shoulder, almost as though to make sure they were real.  “We will wait at the edge of the fields.  If you need us, we will do our best to come to your assistance.”

“Hopefully you won’t have to worry about any of this after today.”  John looked up at the shafts of sunlight breaking through the clouds.  “It’s looking better.  Let’s get this over with.”

Only Rygel continued with them as they crossed the short distance to the lake.  “I shall remember you to your deities,” he offered facetiously, “provided you tell me who they are.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Guido.  Sure you won’t come with us?  I thought Hynerians were aquatic.”

“Only when we are at the top of the food chain.”

“Courageous of you, chum.”  John turned his back on the Dominar.  “Any last thoughts?”

“Be careful.”  Aeryn wrapped the sling of the pulse rifle around her shoulder and began sealing her mask.

“If I was being careful, we wouldn’t be doing this at all.  I’ll try to be smart instead,” he responded.  “Don’t you be macho.  All right?”  John copied Aeryn’s quick, assured movements as they sealed their masks and clear faceplates against the helmets.  He gave her a thumbs-up, waved once to Rygel, and they waded into the lake.

“Come back safely,” Rygel urged, speaking to the widening ripples.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Visibility was every bit as poor as they had anticipated.  The silt and debris washing out of the marsh hung suspended in the lake water, absorbing the light and turning the view into a swirling greenish fog.  John turned to glance behind him, looking up at the dimly seen sky for some landmark that would guide them back to the beach.  The outline of a large tree branch struck out into the brighter sky, a distinctive gnarled pattern that he imprinted on his mind.

When he turned back, Aeryn was gone.  He spun around in the water, then looked straight down, searching frantically in every direction.  She might be no more than three motras away, but he’d lost her.  The tight feeling in his chest had nothing to do with the increasing water pressure.  He spun around again, uncertain whether she would come back to the surface once she realized they’d lost contact, or would stop and wait for him to catch up.

Something touched his foot.  He yelped inside the mask and drew his feet up convulsively.  Aeryn rose to face him, eyes wide in exasperation.  What he could see of the expression seemed to imply that he needed to pull himself together.  The next motion was unquestionably an impatient ‘Let’s go.’

‘After you,’ he gestured.  He had no idea which way the rock pile lay.  He would rely on her training to guide them to the spot where they hoped they would surprise the Things.

Aeryn flipped over and went down, looking back to make sure he was with her this time.  They descended slowly until the lakebed wandered into sight, then leveled off and moved forward.  Every small motion sucked up a cloud of silt, roiling more debris into the water.  John placed a hand on Aeryn’s hip so he wouldn’t loose her again, and looked back.  Visibility behind them was less than two motras.  If they got into a fight down here, they wouldn’t be able to see what they were doing.  He tugged at her harness, bringing her to a stop, then pointed behind them.

‘Bad idea,’ he tried to convey by shaking his head.  They would never see the lake creatures in time.  This was shaping up into a perfect ambush, but they were going to be the ambushees.  He put his hand in front of his faceplate, moved it closer then moved it further away.  ‘No visibility.’  Frustrated motion from Aeryn.  She didn’t understand.  “Crap!” his voice echoed loudly inside his helmet.  Why hadn’t they worked out hand signals ahead of time?  This was a disaster in the making.  He looked at the woman in front of him, and couldn’t take the chance that she might get hurt.  There was too much going wrong before they even got started.  He pointed violently upward.

Aeryn hung in the water studying him.  Then she nodded.  John sighed with relief.  They could work over the missed details, and try again tomorrow.  He inclined his head in thanks, and saw Aeryn smile at him.  He could only see her eyes behind the shield, but he knew with complete certainty that she was letting him have that ‘I’m proud of you’ smile again.  Either that or it was the water pressure, he reflected, turning his cynicism on himself.  But the small, pleased portion of his logic told him that she was smiling because he was displaying ‘smart’ in the pursuit of ‘careful’.  Aeryn kicked toward the surface.

A huge scythe trailing moss and weeds swept out of the dark and sliced past John’s chest, spinning the suspended silt into wild eddies from the force of its passing.  John backpedaled furiously, kicking himself away from the threat, all the while scanning for the second Thing.  Shock sent trickles of sweat creeping inside his suit; small, cold infiltrations that warmed quickly from his exertion.  If he hadn’t insisted that they surface, Aeryn would have been hanging with her back turned, directly in the way of that unannounced, slashing attack.

The pulse rifle responded in frustrating slow motion as he yanked on the sling, pulling it around in front of him as he held his ground.  John pivoted left and right while he waited, trying to scan the entire field of attack in front of him.  If he tried to surface, following Aeryn, he would leave himself vulnerable to an attack from beneath.  As much as he disliked waiting for the Thing, for the moment he was safer near the bottom.

A gust of water pushed against him, carrying enough silt to drop the visibility to less than a motra.  Something swept toward him from the right -- another claw, but this one a monstrosity of nature, gaping wide and reaching for him.  Crushing claw, he realized, like a lobster.  Only this one had an extra, vestigial thumb, which seemed to beckon to him, politely inviting him into the grasp.  He kicked out of its path and fired at the joint, hoping to damage the articulation or blow the whole thing right off.

The chakan oil blast burped loose from the muzzle of the pulse rifle and wobbled toward where the claw had been.  It expanded as it sailed away from him, heating the water into a fizzing fury of vapor.  The heat billowed over John, accompanied by the shockwave from the expanding ball of heated water.  “Shit!”  In the confusion of getting separated, they had forgotten to test the weapons.

He kicked backwards again, praying that Thing #2 wasn’t right behind him.  Where the frell was Aeryn? he wondered.  He didn’t really want her in the midst of this nightmare, but his situation was tactically implausible.  It was, in a word, lethal.

The crushing claw swept toward him again, reaching straight toward his midsection instead of the sweeping movement from one side to the other.  He couldn’t backpedal fast enough.  There was a looming shadow behind the reaching limb, swelling as Thing #1 moved toward him, almost five motras from top to bottom but obscured in the hurricane of silt.  The claw snapped at him, missed, reached closer.  In desperation, John shoved the pulse rifle into the interior of the joint, hoping at best to jam the claw so it couldn’t close.

“Clambake,” he yelled, and pulled the trigger for good measure.  He envisioned the shell turning bright red in the superheated water, but it disappeared into a cloud of shell fragments and black smoking critter innards instead.  “Sonofabitch!”  The pulse blast worked, but only at point blank range where the water couldn’t warp its effect.

The truncated wrist swept out of the cloud of its own disintegrated anatomy and smacked John in the shoulder.  He tumbled over and over, disoriented, and felt the pulse rifle sail out of his grip.  He paddled furiously, unable to find which way was up, or sort out the direction where the threat lay.  The short battle had kicked up untold amounts of dirt off the bottom, and visibility was down to less than a motra.  He got himself oriented, preparing for another frantic defense, but when the sharp slashing claw swept by above his head, he realized he was upside down.

Another shadow flitted past his feet, and Aeryn lunged in close to the dark bulk.  Her hand disappeared into the murk, and there was another expanding ball of heated water and inky innards.  Together, they watched the blade-like claw drift toward the bottom trailing half a motra of arm behind it -- Aeryn looking down and John, inverted, looking above his head.  He turned himself right side up and drew Winona, the rifle lost in the gloom.  Thing #1 was retreating, the dark blob growing less distinct.  They swam after it eagerly, knowing they’d deprived it of its weapons.  Aeryn started to raise the rifle for a longer shot, but he batted it down in slow motion, and swam faster.

They caught it together, separating at the last moment and approaching from both sides.  John still couldn’t see any details, but he shot forward, pulse pistol leading until he felt it grate against hard plating, and then pulled the trigger.  Aeryn appeared from his left and copied his strategy with the more powerful rifle.  The water fizzed and surged, the heat becoming uncomfortable as they fired together.

All vision disappeared abruptly in a mushrooming cloud of black oily material, strings of the substance flipping and squirming as they rushed in all directions.  Despite the closed breather system that continuously recycled his air, there was a rank, oily odor infiltrating its way inside.  “Blech.  Brains,” he pronounced inside his mask.  John glanced down at the timer to see how much longer the breather would provide clean air.  Less than a quarter of an arn had passed.  It had felt more like half a day.

He slid Winona into the holster, and kicked toward where he’d seen Aeryn last.  He bumped into her before he saw her, setting off a frantic, scrambling reaction from both of them.  Her eyes creased into the top half of a smile at the same time that he laughed in relief.  She pointed upward, and he nodded.  Assuming they could even find it in the murk, it was too dangerous to go after Thing #2 at this point.  The water would settle overnight, and they could try again tomorrow.  Together, John and Aeryn kicked toward the surface.

* * * * *

Interlude

Another strange place, more confusion.  John Crichton wandered through endless hallways coated with thick layers of ice, ranks of refrigerators stacked against the walls, filling every frozen corridor to overflowing.  He tried peeking into one or two of them, but the door handles were all jammed with ice and refused to budge.  His feet crunched through the frost, the only noise in this dead, chilled place.  There was no beacon this time, no voice summoning him.  There was only the cold, the pain that had become a constant in each of his worlds, and the sense of loss.  Something was missing, but he didn’t know what.  He frowned, feeling the information at the edges of his awareness but unable to grab it.

He shivered, disconcerted.  He’d grown tired of the voice that had followed him from place to place, irritated by the constant summons, but now that it was gone, he missed it.  There was only one solution, he reasoned.  He would have to find it again.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Part 6

Slow motion replay.  Referees get on-the-field replay to review calls, it’s a simple procedure.  Stop the tape, wind it back, take another look at the positions of the players and determine what occurred.  Coaches do it, too.  Stop, back up, lecture everyone on what went wrong, what they should have done differently, and what they would all do correctly in the future.  Or else you’re fired.  They never say ‘or else you’re dead’.

‘Doesn’t work in real life!’ John Crichton howled inside his own mind.  The stray collection of thoughts flickered and were banished to make room for the bewildering confusion of frantic movements.

He’d had one split-microt to see the slashing movement from one side, grab Aeryn by the harness and spin her out of the way.  Salvador Dali couldn’t have created a more surreal vision than that slow motion ballet involving two bodies, Thing #2 and water pressure -- sans music.  It seemed to take a quarter arn to force his arms through the water to reach her harness, another half an arn just to start the motion to pull her away from the attack.

Flick through a cartoon sequence frame by frame in agonizing slow motion, studying each painstakingly prepared image before moving on to the next.  What do you get?  John Crichton knew.

Flick.  The scything claw, a third again as big as Thing #1’s moves closer.

Flick.  He pulls on Aeryn’s harness, desperation lending strength and speed.

Flick.  Closer, blacker, sharper, faster.

Flick.  She looks at him with surprise and alarm, eyes wide behind the faceplate.

Flick.  The articulated wrist bends to align nature’s wicked blade for the gutting action, only she’s got her back turned and it will rip through her spine.

Her head turns to look behind as he pulls hard.

Closer, trailing moss.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Green silt drifts away from the back of the claw, swirling vortexes forming in the violence of its passage.

Spinning her out of the way is spinning him … frell, he doesn’t care.

Flick.  Closer, tendrils of moss waving almost tenderly as it sweeps lazily toward them.

Flick.  Aeryn.

Flick.  Thing #2 is so much bigger.

Aeryn … No … He can’t get her out of the way in time.

Impact.

Aeryn.

No.

Aeryn.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Part 7

“AERYN!”  John swung hard, kicked harder to drive them both through the water away from the source of injury.  He clutched Aeryn to him as the impact shoved them aside, tossing their entwined bodies away from Thing #2, the water solidifying before their hurtling bodies to battered them.  Her helmet smacked against his, faceplate to faceplate, and he saw not mortal injury, but surprise and … joy.  He pushed her away from the looming threat, and saw the chemicals streaming from the backpack, spewing the contents of the breather through the water to add to the light-dampening miasma.  And underneath it all, the glint of metal.

It seems a bit bulky.

Not once you get it on.

I told them you would probably be in a fight, so they built the rest with that in mind.

The genius technicians had put metal armor underneath everything else.  Joy in her eyes, because Aeryn knew she wasn’t injured.  He’d KILL the frelling little engineer for not telling him.  John made a vow that Niv was going to eat his fungoid-wetsuit piece by piece if they lived to see him again.

John turned in the direction of their attacker, singing “Oh, Quasitoad-o!  I’ve got a treat for you!” The relief streamed through his limbs, giving him strength where moments earlier there had been only shaking weakness.  He pulled the sword loose, shifted it to his left hand, and pulled Winona out of her holster.  “Little like an underwater version of ‘Red Sun’,” he observed, looking at the incongruous pair of weapons.  He moved closer to Aeryn, jerking his head once to ask if she was all right.  Vigorous nod up and down.  They turned back-to-back and waited, slowly kicking themselves toward shore, drawing the creature toward shallower water where they might gain a slight advantage.

Thing #2 struck at John next, the massive crushing claw leaping out of the dark.  He hacked at it with the sword, felt the blade bite and pop loose.  The questing limb jerked out of sight.  “Bet that was owwies.”  A vision of a red lobster shaking its paw popped into his mind.  They floated and kicked, moving gradually away from it, making it follow.

Aeryn started to roll to one side, twisting to bring the rifle to bear.  The black scythe was slicing downward from the side.  He kicked hard, pushed against her back to give her some leverage to complete her turn.  It slashed past them, presenting a black, armored elbow as it overshot.  Aeryn pushed off, thrusting hard against him, placed the rifle against the shell and fired.  It twitched out of the way at the last moment.  John and Aeryn were blown away from each other by the billowing roll of heated water.

Something grabbed him by the foot.  John dragged in a lungful of air, an involuntary preparation in anticipation of pain, but the awkward fist that had grabbed him was a smaller, undifferentiated claw.  It pulled at him, yanking him toward the glowering hulk, doing the fetching so the two weaponed limbs could strike at him at their leisure.  He swept down with the sword, praying he didn’t lop his foot off in the process.

It was like slicing into a well-browned sausage.  Resistance, crunch, slither, pop.  The amputated grasp stroked his foot tenderly and sank out of sight.  Thing #2 had to pissed off by now, he figured.  He turned to join up with Aeryn.

She floated less than two motras away, holding her leg and jerking convulsively.  John holstered Winona and dragged himself frantically through the water.  The last slash hadn’t missed.  Strings of blood drifted out from under her hands, streamed along the suit to flick away from her knee as she floundered toward the surface.  John grabbed her harness and began dragging her toward shore, but Aeryn pulled at his hand and pointed up, desperation in her eyes.  He shook his head.  Thing #2 would be underneath them, they couldn’t go up.  Aeryn beat at her mask with one hand, pulled at it, trying to tell him something.

The breather was damaged.

He spun her around.  The chemicals were still spilling from the huge rent, something a child could have foreseen.  Aeryn was suffocating.  He was an idiot.

John wound his hand into a shoulder strap and struck for the surface, ignoring the threat below.  May die.  Will die.  It really was an easy decision after all, provided he separated the guilt from action.

They didn’t make it to the surface.  Aeryn clutched at him with one hand, jerking a painful warning, while they were still two or three motras from fresh air.  He pushed her upwards and spun to face Thing #2, yanking the pulse pistol out again.  The black bulk was there, just out of sight, hovering, waiting.  Aeryn settled back next to him, facing the creature, by his side.  She was gasping, straining to pull the last of the oxygen out of the failing unit, while her leg continued to blossom clouds of blood.

John pushed her away, toward the surface.  She shook her head.  He kicked backwards with her, watching the stalking shadow, and pushed her again.  He pointed to his chest, then pointed upwards.  ‘I’ll follow.’  Head shake.  He pushed her again.  She would drown if he didn’t do something.  ‘I’ll follow,’ more emphatically.  She shook a fist in his line of sight.  It looked something like ‘I’ll kill you if you don’t.’  Aeryn moved away.

All he needed to do was give her some time to make it to shore.  Then he could beat a hasty retreat.  John glanced at the timer clipped to his harness.  Just over a quarter of an arn had passed since they’d first walked into the lake.  It felt more like days.  All he had to do was give Aeryn a little time.  He tread water lazily and waited.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Aeryn crouched in the shallows, fingers scrabbling frantically at the clasps, trying to release a mask that refused to come free from her helmet.  The breather had failed completely, shutting off all flow to the air lines.  Gloved fingers dug beneath the carefully constructed tubing, seeking to detach them in a vain striving for the flood of air.  But the brilliant technicians had built it too well, and her efforts went unrewarded.  Confusion heralded unconsciousness as her body used up the last of its oxygen, making it impossible to focus long enough to find the secret to removing the mask.  Aeryn pulled vainly at the latch, but numb fingers slipped free and she collapsed into the sand.

The world had faded to shades of brown and gray, a monochromatic view reminiscent of twilight, when she was yanked to her knees and the mask was ripped away.  She hung in someone’s firm grip, gazing in bewilderment at the Luxan boots sinking into the wet sand beside her knees.  D’Argo was lying near death in the Ashrei healing center.  She knew that.  She tried to decide who on this planet would steal his boots and blatantly parade them before her at a time like this.

“Aeryn, we have to get you back to Vossmarr and his friends.  You’re bleeding badly.”  She bit down on her lower lip to prevent any outburst as leather-armored fingers pressed harshly against the wound in her leg, but the pain helped to clear her head, injecting color back into her world.  Aeryn lifted her head, a normally easy movement that had somehow become an exhausting struggle, and examined D’Argo’s concerned face looming over her.  It really was D’Argo, she marveled.  It was D’Argo’s inexhaustible strength pulling her out of the wet sand.

“You were …” Aeryn forgot what she was going to say when she discovered that she didn’t have the strength to stand up.  She collapsed into D’Argo’s embrace.

Cool air flooded into her lungs, filled with the rank odor from the oily muck that coated her suit, and she’d never smelled anything sweeter.  The first trickle of strength filtered into oxygen-starved muscles.

“Vossmarr,” D’Argo explained his presence succinctly.  He started to pick her up.  “We have to get you back, you’re bleeding,” he repeated.

“What are you …” she looked around to see if anyone was with him.  “Why are you here?”

“I came in case you needed any help as you came out of the water.”  He stared down at her, no humor on his face.  “You did.”

Aeryn’s head cleared as if someone had suddenly thrown a switch that reattached her senses to the world around her.  “Where’s John?  He promised he’d be right behind me.”

“John hasn’t come up, Aeryn.”  His serious expression evolved into full-blown grief.  “There’s no sign of him.”

She pushed away from the warrior and limped into the shallows, scanning the shore in both directions.  “Can you see him, D’Argo? … or smell him?  Has he come ashore somewhere else?”  Her leg was throbbing with pain, every weight an agony, but she barely felt it as she searched the shoreline.

“All I can smell is that black stuff that’s all over you, Aeryn.  I can’t even smell you.”  He tried to pull her away from the water.  “Aeryn …”

“GET … away from me.  Get further away from me so you can smell him if he comes up.“  She spat each word out distinctly and separately, plainly telling him that she would not give up on John until she saw the dead body.  “He promised he would follow.  He promised.”  She started to limp along the shore to her left, still scanning for a black-suited figure, looking for any dark shape along the shore.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was playing a waiting game.  When he started for shore, it lunged at him.  When he stopped, it backed off and waited.  If he moved toward it, it retreated, drawing him into deeper water.  John glanced at the timer again.  Only one hundred microts since Aeryn had left.  He wondered if she’d made it to shore.  The uncertainty gnawed at his patience.  He envisioned Aeryn lying on the beach bleeding to death while he played this otherworldly game of tag.  He backed away, and the bow wave of water pressure thrust at him.  The slicer cut through the water, an earnest attempt to gut him.  John hacked at it as it went by, but the angle was all wrong and he only chipped a piece of armor loose.

“Enough’s enough.  Come on out and play, you bastard.  You’re not so tough.  You’re not as tough as Jabba’s pet rancor.  Let’s dance.”  His pulse beat loudly in his ears, the fast rhythm of fear offering a staccato contradiction to his confident chatter.  “Scared spitless, aren’t you John?” he admitted, listening to his pounding heart.  “Well, suck it up.  Come on out, Godzilla.  I don’t have all day!”  John took a tighter grip on his weapons, flipped over and went after it, drifting deeper and deeper into its home territory.

A black hulking shadow loomed directly below him.  John kicked desperately to one side, Winona lining up in hideous slow motion, the sword momentarily useless as the dark form moved toward him.

The indistinct carcass of Thing #1 spun in the current and drifted past.  “Frell!  Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”  He let himself drift upright, spinning in place to view his surroundings.  Watery forces were dragging the corpse away from him through the mud, roiling the silt until visibility was little more than an arm’s length in all directions.  He spun again, looking for some sign of Thing #2.  His feet touched the bottom, and he was enveloped in a cloud of silt.

“Bad idea, John.  Get the frell out of here.  Now, dude!”  Panic struck like lightning, the taste of fear sharp and metallic in his mouth.  He kicked against the lake bottom, but rather than propelling himself upward, his feet sank into the mire, briefly anchoring him in place.  John tried a more explosive thrust and popped loose, his momentum starting a slow ascent through the hazy soup.  “Get out of here, get out of here,” he chanted, the panic easing even as the sense of urgency swelled to gargantuan dimensions.  He jammed Winona into her holster and dragged himself upward, kicking furiously to reach clearer water.

“FRRRRELL!!”  He sucked in a deep breath of relief, inhaling the mild aroma of the chemicals that were cleaning his air supply.  The sense of claustrophobia created by the low visibility began to fade.  He glanced down.  Something dark moved under his feet.  “Shit!”  He grabbed for Winona, pressing hard to move his hand through the water in time.  The carcass rolled and twisted below his feet.  John laughed weakly.  “Scar’t me twiced, ya daid,” he scolded Thing #1’s remains.

More sunlight was penetrating the depths now, and visibility had increased to almost two motras.  Crichton began to relax, recovering from the series of starts and shocks he’d given himself.  He kicked toward shallower, clearer water, realizing how stupid it had been to play into Thing #2’s strategy.

It struck.

Crichton screamed as it snagged both legs, gathering him into the trap it had laid.  It had lured him into deeper water so it could get between him and the shore.  He twisted against the massive grip that had fastened around both thighs, struggling to face Thing #2 even as he felt something snap in his left leg.  He gave vent to the agony, howling out his pain.  Bubbles cascaded loose from around the edge of the breather mask, creating a silvery curtain as he exceeded the capacity of the relief valve.  The slicing claw he’d seen arcing toward Aeryn would be coming toward him; he knew it was already on its way.

He used his pinned legs for leverage, twisting in the grip despite the horrible sensations being transmitted through his nervous system, and watched for the slashing movement.  He was jerked to one side through the water, the critter dragging him about like some sort of plaything.  The force of the motion wrenched his body against his trapped legs, and he bellowed again in pain and anger.

The thin cutting claw was coming at him, ballooning into sight from his left as it struck toward his stomach.  The Ashrei blade wobbled through the currents as he swung it desperately to that side, using both hands to fend off the strike that would gut him.  He couldn’t move fast enough.  Time seemed to accelerate as his weapon crept incrementally into the line of the attack.

There were two fast, painless impacts, and the arm snagged itself on the blade, driving the metal deep into the joint just above the claw.  The limb whipped back into the dark, recoiling in pain, carrying the buried metal with it.  John clung to the grip desperately, unwilling to give up his close-range weapon.  His body was jerked after it, generating signals of indescribable damage from his right leg.  His left leg had gone numb already and no longer troubled him.  He all but lost the sword, yanking it loose at the last moment.  It slipped from his hands, and he lunged for it, pulling it back with a tenuous three-fingered grip.

The mask was delivering oxygen again, but there was something wrong with the face shield.  The view had gone blurry.  John sucked in another breath, blinked hard, and his vision cleared.  The dark form loomed over him, towering above his insignificant struggles.  The agony from his crushed legs reverberated up his spine as Thing #2 dragged him into its clutches.  He was abruptly chilled inside the wetsuit, shaking and ill from the assault on his nervous system.  He fought down the nausea as he was hauled closer.

“Eat steel!” he cried, half a bellow of defiance, half a howl of pain.  The blade sank into the unseen body before him, and he thrust further then twisted and wrenched the grip, trying to increase the damage.  A limb wavered into his sight from the right, an unspecialized arm that clouted him in the helmet, filling the face shield with a torrent of water.  John bellowed as the hold on his legs tightened, but he drew the sword out amidst the haze of agony, and hacked at the form in front of him again.

He fumbled the grip into his left hand, shaking with the onset of shock, and grabbed at his pulse pistol.  The cutting claw appeared from his left, trailing a cloud of black ichor.  He parried weakly, knowing he was once again too late.  The creature did all the work for him, tearing into the razor-sharp blade with frenetic strength.  The black, blade-like claw was hewn loose at the wrist, bouncing against John’s ribs before dropping into the depths, carrying his blade with it.

“Come back here, you yellow bastard,” John panted weakly into the raging breath sounds inside his helmet.  “Come back here and take what’s coming to you.”  He was crying from the pain now, but he had both hands wrapped around Winona’s grip, and Thing #2 was drawing him in again.

Two arms battered at him.  The unspecialized one from the right hammered at his head and shoulders, and from the left, the truncated wrist battered at his stomach and ribs as though its hand was still attached.  John was pulled forward with a jerk, hauled into the shadows beneath a looming, armored head even as the two arms continued to flail at him.  The body was within reach, obscured but finally within an arm’s length.

John thrust Winona forward with both hands, jamming it against the body until he felt it lodge between joints in the carapace.  He jerked the trigger again and again, ignoring the roiling steam and backlash of heat.  The water went opaque, a murky stew of boiling water, blood, critter innards and mud.  He ignored the darkness outside his faceplate and continued firing.

Winona was becoming harder to hang on to as his strength waned.  He needed both hands just to pull the trigger.  His breath was rasping in his helmet, the only noise in his world.  The darkness had somehow gotten inside his helmet, dimming and blurring his vision.  And then the pummeling stopped.  He let his hands drop, Winona thumping weakly against his hip.  Nothing happened.  It was over.

John looked dumbly at the huge grip that still held his legs.  Death hadn’t relaxed the muscles trapping him, and they were sinking together.  He pushed against the armor plating with his left hand, more a feeble fumbling than a struggle for freedom.  The dark, imprisoning bulk began to topple as it sank, carrying him sideward through the fouled water.  He pushed again.  Nothing.

“Can’t do it,“ he mumbled to the collection of images in his head.  He looked up toward the rippling light, seeing not the overhanging tree limbs or the sun that had come out, but his father and his friends.  Zhaan shook her head and frowned at him, displeased.  He was sinking.  “Did what had to be done, Dad.”  Each word was a painful effort.  “Aeryn’s safe,” he told Zhaan, finding one last breath.  “My train this time.  My train.”  The pain in his legs was gone.  He relaxed.

“John, I do not wish to die.”  Harvey’s voice intruded on the tranquility that had fallen over him.

“Damn!  I was hoping this last bit of underwater insanity would earn me a ticket to Purgatory.  Couldn’t you at least wait until I’m dead before coming to collect?”

“As much as you despise my existence, John, I am not your Devil.”

“Leave me alone, Harv.  Even a far-flung Farscape flier deserves to die in peace.”

“Not yet.”

His mind was empty.  John sighed, content that it was going to happen this way, pleased that Harvey had left him alone for the final moments.  He’d done what he’d set out to do.  Aeryn, D’Argo and Chiana would all recover.  There were some things he would have preferred to finish, but they didn’t really matter anymore.  He could rest now.  His head dropped.  Winona began to slide from his grip.  He could rest now.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

D’Argo plodded dejectedly along the shore behind Aeryn as she continued to search for some sign of John.  It had been too long, though, and in his hearts, he knew that Crichton must be dead.  He tagged along, ignoring the pain of his healing injuries, waiting for Aeryn to admit that John had lost the battle that had almost certainly taken place beneath the quiet surface of the lake.  “Aeryn, you have to let someone tend to your wound,” he tried again.  She was limping badly, an indulgence the ex-Peacekeeper would never have allowed herself if she weren’t severely injured.

“No.”  The anguish in the single word was more than enough to convince him to let her work it out in her own way.  “He’ll come up, D’Argo.”  She limped four more steps and stopped.  “He promised me he’d follow.”

“Aeryn …”  He stopped, wrinkling his nose, overwhelmed by the moldy, fishy odor he could smell on Aeryn.  It was suddenly ten times more repugnant.  D’Argo turned in time to watch incredulously as Crichton pulled himself out of the water on his elbows, crawling ashore barely a twenty motras away.  “Aeryn!  Over there!”  D’Argo broke into a clumsy run, feeling the stabbing discomfort from his wounds with every pounding step.

John was yanking his mask away as D’Argo ran toward him, still lying immersed to his chest in the muddy shallows.  He wasn’t making any attempt to get up, not even to get to his knees, and D’Argo tried to run faster.  He felt a tearing in his chest and ignored it, charging through the sand toward his friend.  Crichton grinned weakly at him as he approached, then slumped back into the water, letting his head rest on his forearm just barely clear of the small lapping waves.

“Hey, Big D.  Glad to see you up and around.”  Crichton’s voice was a rasping whisper, almost obscured behind the slapping sound of the tiny wavelets washing up against him.

“John.  Thank the Gods, you’re all right.”  He crouched over the astronaut, carefully pulling the helmet and its attachments away.  “Can you get up?”

“Don’t think so,” he panted.  “There’s some damage down there.  A broken leg or two.”  He grimaced, moving just his eyes to look up at the big warrior crouching over him.

“Or two?”  Aeryn arrived, hobbling painfully through the shallows.  “You’ve only got two legs, John.”  He didn’t seem to be in any pain so she forced herself to relax, assuming that it was another of his peculiar jokes.

“Yeh.”  His voice was getting weaker.  “How you doin’, babe?”  He raised one hand out of the mud to point at the blood streaming out of the rent in her suit.  “You okay?”

“I’ll be fine.”  Aeryn knelt in the water beside him.  “What took you so long?  Stop for a trophy?”  She looked for the sword, but it was gone.

“Thing Two … dead now,” he struggled with the words.

“JOHN?”  Aeryn began looking for injuries.

“Where are you hurt?” D’Argo demanded in alarm.

John coughed once, swallowed convulsively with a small look of panic in suddenly widening eyes, and then vomited a gush of blood into the water in front of him.  “Oops,” he coughed the syllable out.  “I’m screwed.”  He looked at the discolored current flowing around him with dismay, then sagged back into the water.

D’Argo splashed down on his knees next to Aeryn, ignoring the mud that soaked into his pants and tunic, and together they eased Crichton over onto his back.  “John.  Oh no, John,” D’Argo groaned.  A moment later he staggered back to his feet with the limp figure cradled in his arms, ignoring the burning pain in his own chest and stomach.  “Can you follow on your own, Aeryn?  I’ll send someone …”

“GO!” she yelled, gesticulating with one hand.  “Go!  Get him back to Vossmarr.  Now!”  She watched the broad back hurry away from her, John’s dark wet hair and black suited feet the only parts of him visible as he was carried toward the village at a run.  “Hurry, D’Argo,” she whispered after them.  She got to her feet with difficulty, then stood staring into the dark water of the lake, wondering what she could have done differently.

Aeryn finally understood John’s recent depression in all of its intricacies.  She knew that every logical argument would lead her to the same conclusion every time:  there wasn’t anything she could have or would have done differently that would have changed the outcome.  And despite that knowledge, she was consumed by the guilt of coming to the surface to save herself while John was below fighting for his life.  Logic told her it was fate, but it felt like betrayal.  Aeryn turned away from the water and struggled across the black sand, up the ledge, and began the long walk back to the village.

The voices of Aksal and several others were echoing across the marsh as she approached the fork in the path, the excited chatter loud against the quiet whispers of the breeze through the grass and trees.  Aeryn wiped her tears to the edges of her face, where they would go undetected amidst the small streams of water still trickling from her hair.  She straightened up, back rigidly erect, and limped forward to meet them.

* * * * *

Interlude

John wandered down the alleyway between the carnival stalls, looking for a good one where he could spend the last of his money.  He jingled the last of his change in his jeans pocket, enjoying the quiet music of the coins sifting through his fingers.  He’d somehow forgotten to wear any shoes, but the grass was surprisingly clean and lush under foot, not beaten down like it would be at most traveling carnivals.  He glanced down the intersecting alleys as he crossed each one, but they were all empty.  He could hear excited screams over the clank and music of the rides, but it seemed that no one was bothering to visit the midway.

His stomach hurt, probably from something he had eaten.  He knew better than to get his meals out of a deep fat fryer, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had junk food.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had food, for that matter.  He stopped and puzzled that one a bit, but came no closer to recall.  His legs were aching, paying him back for wandering around barefoot.  He should have worn his boots.  John looked down at his toes, wiggled them in the cool grass, and couldn’t remember when he’d taken to wearing heavy boots.  He preferred sneakers.

A motion to one side drew his attention.  Flags fluttered around a sign reading “Fortunes Told/Spirits Mended”, garish red paint on an intricate blue and yellow background blaring out the promise.  He leaned over the counter, peering inside the canvas stall, but no one was there.  He glanced over his shoulder to see if there was a better place to be fleeced out of fifty cents, tapping his quarters on the wooden surface in the meantime, trying to attract the attention of the operator.

He turned around and jumped, startled by the sudden appearance of the booth’s owner.  She was beautiful, exotic, expertly made up to look like some sort of alien.  He didn’t know how she had moved so silently.  One microt she hadn’t been there, the next she was standing so close he could practically feel her touching him.

“Hey,” John greeted the woman, trying to see a flaw in the makeup.  She was the same intricate yellow on blue pattern as the sign mounted above her tent.  She nodded her head in acknowledgement, almost as if he’d spoken her name instead of his usual informal greeting.  He handed her his quarters, trying to decide if he wanted his fortune told or wanted to find out what sort of mystical hogwash she used for ‘mending his spirit’.

“John?”  The voice had come back.  It was calling from somewhere to his right.  He ignored the noise.  He’d been through this again and again.  He was pleased that the voice had returned, reassured by its presence, but he’d searched for it before, and its source remained lost to him.

“John!”  The voice was more demanding, but he continued to gaze at the blue lady, enraptured by her look of serenity, the quiet balance of every graceful movement.  She still didn’t speak.  She gestured toward the voice with one hand, but he didn’t bother looking.  She pointed a second time with more emphasis.  When he still didn’t look she took him gently by the shoulder, turned him, and pushed him firmly in the direction of the voice.

John took two steps then crumpled to the ground, overwhelmed by a horrible pain in his legs.  He swayed on his hands and knees, just barely conscious.  He almost had it under control when his stomach upped the ante, trying to out perform his legs in the ‘Doesn’t-This-Hurt? Sweepstakes’.  He tried to look back at the fortuneteller for help, but he couldn’t move against the agony.  He collapsed, soft blades of grass poking at the side of his face as he curled his body around the arms he had pressed into his screaming gut.

The echoing voice called to him again, beckoning him toward it.  He tried to lift himself with his arms, tried to crawl closer to see who it was, to see if they would help him, but he only managed a single body length, hitching himself along like a half-crippled caterpillar, before his arms gave out and he sank back into the grass.  He stared at the short blades in front of his nose, wishing he knew what was happening to him but also sensing that things were about to get worse.  A wave of pain smashed down on him, swirled through his entire body, draining his energy away from him as it receded.  He could tell that another one was coming; he could feel it growing like the swells at the beach.  The next roller came in and pounded him into the darkness.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Part 8

They’d repaired the muscles, treated the fractured bone, closed the wound and replaced the lost blood.  They were fast, skilled, and compassionate.  When she seemed depressed at being sentenced to confinement on a bed, they’d let her move to one of the couch-like benches in the garden outside her room.  They’d made sure she was comfortable, made sure she knew how to summon them if there was a problem, and they’d left her alone.

Aeryn sighed, at ease with the solitude.  It was simpler this way.  She didn’t have to worry about presenting the correct expression, making the right noises of concern, or mouthing the anxious phrases that were unknown to her but anticipated by them.  She hugged her arms around her ribs and waited for them to come tell her, firmly directing her thoughts anywhere except toward what she would do with her life if John died.

The bleakness found a toehold, threatening to swallow her, and she fiercely pushed her thoughts in another direction, unwilling to consider that possibility.  She might be able to survive losing John if Zhaan was there to show her how to live, how to go on without him.  But Zhaan was gone as well.  She didn’t need to consider the future without John though, because there would be no life without him.

“Aeryn?”  Chiana’s slim frame was lost inside the thickly quilted pants and top that they all wore.  D’Argo was half carrying her as they moved together through the door.  He was back in the quilted clothing as well, having reopened several of his wounds during his desperate race to get John back to the village.  “How are you doing?” Chiana asked as D’Argo helped her get settled.  The lithe frame wound itself into one of the chairs, achieving a position that looked impossible, not to mention uncomfortable.

“Fine.”  The single word was all she could force out past the tightness in her throat.  She gestured toward D’Argo, asking in a motion how he was doing.

“They’ll take good care of him, Aeryn.  They saved me.”  He didn’t actually say they’d be able to save John, Aeryn noticed.  She nodded and looked away.  “Would you like us to leave you alone?”

“No.”  She looked back at the pair.  “You know me too well, D’Argo.”  He knew that it was her nature to deal with trauma in a solitary fashion, but he also knew that she would want their company.  “Thank you.”

“May I come in?”  Rygel maneuvered his Throne Sled between the arched plantings, floating into their secluded area.

“Where have you been?” Chiana began an attack.

“Chiana,” D’Argo’s hushed voice rebuked her.  “Rygel was waiting in the village with Vossmarr and Aksal.  We set it up when I went down to the lake.  He was the one who talked them into meeting me half way.  If they hadn’t come to meet me, John wouldn’t have survived.”

Aeryn spoke into the ensuing stunned silence.  “Thank you, Rygel.”

“How is Crichton?”  The Dominar finally put everyone’s thoughts into words.

“Still alive.”  Vossmarr stepped into their garden area from an adjoining enclosure.  He chose a deep cushioned chair and deposited his slim frame with none of his usual coordinated grace.  The tiled surface beneath them reverberated with the heavy thump generated by his arrival on the furniture.  The Aleph frowned at D’Argo.  “You should not be walking,” he chastised.  “Your feat was selfless, but it was also, perhaps, foolish.”

“I could not have done anything less for John.”  D’Argo responded to the healer’s beckoning motion, crouching on one knee by Vossmarr’s side to allow the slender fingers an easy reach.

Black eyes stared into the distance for several microts as the Luxan’s physical condition was assessed, then he bowed his head, thanking D’Argo for his consideration.  “Fascinating.  You sustain injury well, Ka D’Argo.  You will heal … again.”  He put pointed emphasis on the last word.  “We would prefer not to have to repair the damage a third time, however.  You will, perhaps, take that into consideration over the next few days?”

Vossmarr finished his kindly lecture, and then turned toward Aeryn, surveying the tense, quivering muscles.  “John Crichton’s legs were badly broken by the creature, and he suffered severe injuries to the internal organs in his abdominal cavity.  We have repaired all of the damage, and the bones in his legs are responding well to the process that we use to repair such injuries.”

“But,” Aeryn prompted, hearing the unsaid portions hanging in his voice.

“But he has lost a great deal of blood, and unlike Luxans, Nebari, or Sebaceans,” he nodded at each person in turn, “we have no equivalent for his species.”  He sighed.  “It would, perhaps, be best if you all come talk to him now.”

Aeryn put her head down on her knees and let the tears flow, giving in to her grief but still hiding the outpouring of her emotional attachment to John.

“Then he’s dying,” Chiana wailed as D’Argo kicked a planter over.  Rygel spun his Throne Sled around and disappeared from the garden in a rush.

Vossmarr looked around, jaw dropping at the reactions around him.  “NO!  No, no, no!  I am … Forgive me.  I did not realize that all of your cultures observed the custom of saying goodbye to … Oh, dear.”  He got to his feet, distraught.  “John Crichton is very weak.  There is nothing more that we can do but wait to see if he can endure.  He is the one who must make the effort now.  All of you can help by talking to him, coaxing him back to this reality.  I only meant that it would benefit him if you come and talk to him until he awakens.”  The slender hands flailed in distress.

Chiana was the first to recover, giving in to a shock driven giggle.  D’Argo dumped his body into a chair, creating a greater shockwave than Vossmarr’s uncontrolled descent.  “Hezmana, I think you stopped both my hearts,” he moaned.

Aeryn rubbed her eyes on her sleeve before looking up, willing to reveal red, bleary eyes as long as she could deny them the sight of actual tears.  “John is always trying to get us to talk to him about things,” she laughed weakly.  “Aeryn, we need to talk,” she mimicked.  “Now’s our chance, and we don’t have to listen to him while we do it.”  Her shaky laughter was joined by D’Argo and Chiana.

“This is not to say that his condition is not severe, but it is not currently fatal.  We are doing our best.”  Vossmarr had recovered most of his usual calm poise.  “If I assist, can you walk a short distance, Aeryn Sun?”

She swung her legs off the couch without hesitation, balancing on one leg until he reached her side.  It was an awkward arrangement.  Vossmarr was too tall, but he finally got one forearm tucked under her arm, and together they began the slow, hobbling journey into the building.

“Come,” he beckoned to D’Argo and Chiana.  “You have walked quite far today, Ka D’Argo, I don’t suppose a little further will cause permanent damage, and young Chiana does not weigh as much as John Crichton.  You may support her.”  He smiled, putting humor into the implied admonition, all of his gentle reserve firmly back in place.  “Your company will only benefit John Crichton’s recovery.  You must convince him to continue fighting.”

“Where’s everyone going?” Rygel descended back into the garden.

“Come on, Rygel,” D’Argo invited.  “We’re all going to go talk to John.  There’s a chance he’ll even listen to you this time.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Aeryn paused outside the room, watching the occupants for a while before entering.  D’Argo was stretched out in a chair alongside the bed, his feet in another, just watching while Chiana perched on the side of the bed holding John’s hand and talking to him.  They’d taken turns staying with the unconscious astronaut; talking, cajoling, and sometimes yelling at him over the last two planetary days, trying to summon him back from wherever he’d gone.

The horrific injuries had begun to heal.  The same exceptional skills that had saved Chiana and D’Argo, had repaired John’s damaged internal organs, prevented shock, and staved off infection.  But they couldn’t replace the lost blood.

The Ashrei had formulated a blood substitute to replace the lost volume, maintain his organs, and carry oxygen, but they’d explained that his renal organ would continue to remove the foreign substance, requiring constant replacement of the synthetic, and eventually his body would begin to reject it.  John’s own body would have to replace enough of the missing blood before that happened, or his organs would fail and he would die.  Meanwhile, he was somewhere else -- someplace that left a furrow in his forehead and an anxious look on his face.

“Any change?”  She’d only been gone four arns this time.  The medical staff had insisted that she get some sleep, and the word ‘feltisk’ had been used as a threat if she didn’t accept the exile from his room voluntarily.  She’d chosen the voluntary method because it meant she wouldn’t stay asleep for as long.

“One long sigh,” Chiana said.  That was nothing new.  The long sigh usually came as the anxious look reached its greatest intensity, then everything would relax for an arn or two before starting over.  “I wonder where he is when he sighs like that.  Earth, you think?”

“I’ve decided that when he sighs like that, he’s probably some place where they won’t provide him with his pitza and beir,” D’Argo grumbled from his slumped spot across the two chairs.

Aeryn smiled at the interpretation.  “Come on, John.  Wake up you frelling lazy human.”  Being nice hadn’t worked so far.  It was time to change her approach.  “Wake up!  We want to go back to Moya.  Food’s loaded, Rygel’s up there eating his way through the supply.  If you don’t wake up, there’ll only be dentics left.”

“They said talk to him, not lie to him,” the indignant Hynerian objected from the corner.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The books and stories always had wonderful tales about floating in the dark where it was warm and safe, hearing and knowing what was going on around the hero as he lay injured or dying.  Crichton wanted to find some of those idiot authors and shake a little sense into them.  He was hot, he hurt, the noise around him kept him from sleeping, the constant clatter bothered his ears, and his legs felt like they were being crushed under the weight of an entire Leviathan.  He had no idea where he was or what had happened, and didn’t have enough energy to even tell all those inconsiderate bastards out there to shut up and let him sleep.  He certainly wasn’t the dying hero, but it would have been nice to at least be the unconscious Erp-man.  He sighed in disgust.

“John, can you hear me?  John, please wake up.”

Aeryn!  It had been Aeryn calling to him in each of his twisted dreams.  He wanted time to think about that, but the pain in his legs and stomach made any kind of concentration nearly impossible.  She was shouting at him now, demanding that he answer her, instead of asking politely.  He was getting annoyed.  He knew that if she would just shut up for a few microts he could figure this out, and then he would be willing to respond to her repeated demands.

She was badgering him again, more crap about talking to her.  There was another voice chiming in then, and he had to decide who else was there to bother him.  He finally identified D’Argo, and that made him feel even more exasperated.  The big guy should know enough to leave him alone at a moment like this.  He decided that he would simply have to tell them to shut up, energy or no energy.

“Tryin’ to s’eep,” he complained.

There was a noise like a hiccup next to him, or perhaps it had been a sob.  “By the grace of Cholak, at last,” Aeryn breathed.  “John, would you open your eyes and look at me … please?”

He knew this was a ridiculous request, a simple task that deserved none of the anxiety that was distorting her voice.  “Shurr,” he agreed to her appeal.

“John, look at me.”  He thought he had done that already.  What did she want?  He couldn’t remember.  “John, open your eyes.”  That was it … now he remembered.  She wanted him to open his eyes.  Not enough energy.  Everyone had finally gone silent around him.  He sighed in relief, letting sleep gather him in to take him away from the horrible sensations coming from the lower half of his body.

“JOHN!!”

“Jesus Chris’, lemmee ‘lone.”  He looked at her, hoping to find out what the huge frelling problem was here.  Must be a major disaster, he decided, because Aeryn appeared to be on the verge of tears … and in public, too.  It looked like they’d sold tickets to the event.  He was surrounded by people -- D’Argo, Chiana, the tall gangly guy he seemed to remember meeting at some point, even Rygel was there.  “W’as goin’ on?”

Aeryn began to laugh, but tears were streaking down her cheeks even as he watched, to be surreptitiously wiped away before anyone else noticed.  Everyone around him was smiling all of sudden, leaving John feeling extremely concerned.  If they were all standing around grinning at him like this, he must have screwed up big time.  But no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t remember what the frell had happened or how he had gotten here -- wherever ‘here’ was.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Part 9

John held his hand in the stream of late day sunlight, turning it from one side to the other, allowing the intense rays to illuminate the greenish hue of his skin.  “Green blood,” he stated for the third time, still trying to cope with the sight of the emerald-colored blood substitute working its way into the vein in his arm.  “The name’s Crichton, not Kermit.”  It was supposed to be funny, but the weak, rasping voice emerging from his throat took most of the edge off the humor.  “Rest of the damage?”

Aksal was doing the explaining while Vossmarr got some much needed sleep, the victim of a well executed feltisk-plot.  “Both of your legs were broken in several places, and the surrounding tissue was badly crushed.  We have a technology however, and we can …”

John interrupted in a rush.  “If you say anything about rebuilding me, I’m getting up and leaving.”

Aksal struggled for a new phrase, perplexed by the objection but trying to comply anyway.  “The … uhh … We repaired the tissue damage, and the technology is re … is …”  He scratched his head with one of his index fingers.

“Ignore him,” ordered D’Argo.

Aksal started to pull the covers aside.  “Perhaps if I show you how we rebuild the bones.”

“No!”  John managed to get a little more force behind his voice.  “I’ll take your word for it.  I don’t want to see what you’re doing under there.  Everything will work like it did before, right?  That’s all that matters.”

“Oh, yes.  The bones will be restored by tomorrow, and in ten or twelve solar days you won’t even know you were ever injured.  A little weakness in the muscles perhaps, but that will pass quickly.  Your friends can assure you.”  Aksal watched the drooping eyelids and shaking hands, using a less-evolved method of diagnosis to determine that John had coped with enough for one day.  “You require rest.  We will leave you for a while.  Be well, John Crichton.”

“Aeryn?  Stay for a bit?”  John waited while the rest of the group offered small assurances and filed out before reaching for her hand.  “Sorry.”

“For what?”  She perched on the side of the bed.

“Not keeping my promise.”

“You were a little late, but you showed up.”  There was something bothering him.  It had showed from the first moment after his memory bounded back.  There’d been a confused half an arn when he’d been unable to remember anything after standing at the edge of the lake, inviting Rygel to come with them.  Some small promptings had unlocked the entire episode, leaving him pale with shock from the memory of the desperate underwater scuffle.

He looked out the window, staring blindly at the lengthening shadows in the garden.  “I screwed up worse than usual, Aeryn.”

“I didn’t think there was any room left on the scale,” she teased.

John wrestled with his conscience, tempted to let her small joke end the discussion.  “I should have told you sooner.  I …”  He needed to tell her about the night in the marsh because of something else, but he couldn’t seem to find the correct way to launch into the subject.  He fixed his gaze on the brownish-gray covers over his lower body, more of the insulating fungus cloth, and blurted, “That night in the marsh, I saw Thing Number Two and could have shot it and didn’t.”

When Aeryn’s silence stretched into its tenth microt, he looked up from his careful examination of the covers.  She was watching him, her expression a strange mixture of tolerance, residual anxiety, and what he thought might be a dangerous level of anger.

“It wasn’t your fault that Chiana and D’Argo got hurt,” she started slowly.  “I hit Thing Number One more than six times.  You couldn’t have killed it.”

“I might have turned back the attacks,” he argued.  She remained close to detonation.  “What else?”  His prompt was met with more silence.  “Talk to me,” he smiled grimly.  They’d told him about the two days of one-sided conversations that had injected the voices into his stream of warped dreams.

“You listened to advice from that … that …” she gestured toward his head, “abomination, didn’t you?”

“No!” he denied it sharply.  “Only when I couldn’t get D’Argo’s wound to run clear.  I was desperate and he,” John gestured toward his head as well, unwilling to name the clone in the face of Aeryn’s lingering anger, “suggested how to hit him harder.”  He decided that Aeryn never needed to know that he’d been so overwhelmed by guilt that he’d started to panic, letting that uncontrolled reaction shut down his thinking.  If he’d stayed in control, he never would have needed Harvey’s help.

Aeryn sighed, finally sounding relaxed.  “That’s all right then.  We all made mistakes this time.  Everyone is alive.  We’re all going to heal.  Get some sleep, John.”

John allowed her to settle him.  He let her pull the detestable fungus covers up to keep him warm, and smiled at her before she left the room.  As soon as she was gone, he shoved the covers back down around his waist, and stared out the window at the dim shadows of greenery outside, details disappearing in the darkening twilight.  He thought about the part that he’d meant to tell Aeryn, and had stopped short of confessing.

He hadn’t kept his promise.  Winona had been sliding out of his grasp, about to sail off into the depths of the lake, when he’d been hit with a surge of adrenalin unlike anything he’d ever experienced in his life.  The pain, the cold, and the fatigue had all bounded back in an instant, making his slow death an unpleasant prospect.  The artificial enervation and the discomfort had provided the impetus that steadied his hands long enough to blow joint of the crushing claw into more boiled seafood bits, and to thrash his way ashore.

Not yet.

There was only one explanation for that unnatural burst of adrenalin.  Harvey.  There were few certainties in life, but he was positive that Aeryn would not want to hear that the clone had saved his life by manipulating his physiology.  And she would never hear from him that, in effect, it was the clone who had kept the hand-signaled promise.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Doing all right?” Aeryn asked, waiting while he caught his breath.  They were working their way slowly across the field toward the transport pod.  D’Argo had moved it closer to the village, but it still seemed like a very, very long distance.  John nodded, and continued the slow traverse across the weeds.

The morning had disappeared under a flood of visits from grateful villagers, Sellimarr and his wife, and from Niv and his band of beaming technicians.  Crichton’s threat to carry out his vow about feeding him the wetsuit had yielded nothing more than a knowing smirk.  Vossmarr’s light touch had proclaimed all of them ‘perhaps, sufficiently recovered’, and the Aleph had accepted an offer from Rygel to travel by transport pod back to his permanent posting at the planet’s Central Health Authority.  It seemed that he, too, was one of the great ones, and would some day be interned next to his small cousin.

“Stop for a microt.”  John let Aeryn steady him while he waited for his heart to stop pounding wildly in his chest.  “Little out of breath.”  That was a small understatement, he decided belatedly.  It was more a case of trying to breathe in an atmosphere where someone had very inconsiderately removed all the oxygen.  The last time he’d felt this oxygen deprived, he’d just jumped out of a space ship without a suit.  “Gotta a question … in a microt,” he gasped.

“Take your time.”  Aeryn waited patiently.

“So … Two of those critters.”  He began moving toward the transport again, placing each foot carefully.  He only had to make it another twenty motras, and then he could collapse.  He eyed the steps to the hatch, and tried to estimate how many arns it would take to get up them.

“Yes.  You already remembered that.”  A few details had been lost to severe blood lost, but he’d been able to put most of the memories back together.

“What do you think?  Siblings, mother and son, or momma and poppa?”

They stopped again while he caught his breath.  John hunched over with his hands on his knees and waited for his environment to stop spinning.  They were only ten motras from the transport.  Aeryn looked toward the marsh, toward where the lake was hidden behind the trees beyond.  “You think …”  He grinned up at her and shrugged.  “No,” she rejected the thought.

“Nah.”  He straightened up.  His skin was still an odd shade of puce as his body filtered out the last of the artificial blood, and the substitute didn’t seem to carry oxygen as well as the real stuff.  “Definitely not.”

“They would have already.  Wouldn’t they?”

“Don’t look at me.  I don’t know the first thing about the breeding cycle of the Loch Ness monster.  I was asking what you think.”  He almost had his breath back.

“Let’s get out of here,” Aeryn suggested.  “Quick.”

“I don’t go anywhere quick these days.”  They hobbled and limped toward the transport, both firmly refusing to look back toward where the two creatures had resided for so many cycles.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Crichton walked into Pilot’s Den slowly, still finding it somewhat disconcerting to be strolling about pain free, when his legs had been broken only five planetary days earlier.  His gait was still a bit erratic, his course occasionally making wild detours as the healing muscles complained or even went out on strike completely for brief moments.  He took his time getting across the bridge, eyeing the narrow span with more concern than usual, and completed the traverse with great care.

“Hey, Pilot!” he called his usual greeting.

“Crichton.  I am very pleased to see you.”  The large head tilted to one side, examining him judiciously.  “It would appear that you have taken on some decidedly Hynerian characteristics.”

“More Kermit jokes!  Wonderful.  Et tu, Pilot?”  Everyone had been teasing him.  Aksal had sworn vehemently that it would only take one or two more solar days for his kidneys to filter out the last of the color-altering substance, but his crewmates weren’t making that interval an easy one.

“I merely make an observation, John.”

“Rygel said all the supplies got stashed okay.  No problems?  No stowaways?”

A carefully placed comment by the Hynerian had alerted the Ashrei to the fact that almost all of Moya’s able-bodied crew were interned in the healing center, and an enormous work gang of grateful villagers had turned out to load and unload the supplies.  They had returned from their visit to the gentle beast babbling excitedly about the weaponless spacefaring  creature that rumbled her welcome to them.  They’d seen a kindred species in the aggressionless Leviathan; one whose exceptional talent for running away through starburst assured them that they were not cowards.

“The Ashrei were extremely appreciative.  They provided far more than the agreed upon supplies, and arranged for Moya to receive some components that will speed the last of her repairs.”  Pilot tended to his controls for several microts.  “From what D’Argo and Chiana have told me, it seems that you provided far more than the originally agreed upon services, also.”

“Those critters were evil, Pilot.  They had to go.”  John wandered closer to the edge of Pilot’s island, but left a large margin to allow for weak muscles.  “Pilot,” he began hesitantly.

“Yes, Crichton.”  The large eyes watched as he continued to hesitate, the calm gaze finally goading him into continuing.

“You said once that your species is incapable of space travel on their own.  Do your people ever travel off your planet by any method other than bonding with a Leviathan?”  John wandered around the outer edges of Pilot’s station, looking studiously at the floor, the neural cavern, the walls -- anywhere except at Pilot.

“No.  Not that I know of, John.”

“Did your species ever travel off your planet?  Sometime in the distant past?  Or have you always lived on a single planet?”

“The elders sometimes related a legend concerning a group that was exiled from our planet over six millennia ago.  The tale is considered to be a fiction made up to scare the young into better behavior.  Even Moya’s datastores have no indications that our species exists any place in the universe other than my home world.”  Three of the four arms continued working, while the other rested unmoving on a console, mottled shell gleaming in the muted light of the Den.  “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious, Pilot.”  Two DRDs zoomed across one of the spans leading from the doorway to Pilot’s station, circled around John’s ankles briefly to examine the biologic in their domain, and then continued on their way.  He watched their progress until they disappeared.  “I just thought that a species that quested after star travel might have gotten around a bit more.”

“Who might have gotten around what a bit more?” Aeryn asked, striding into the Den.  “Hello, Pilot.”  She smiled broadly at the huge symbiote.

John watched the athletic, confident stride that contained only the slightest remnant of a limp, and felt the usual rush of excitement in his chest.  It was the warm feeling that weakened his knees, left him breathless, and turned his thoughts into nonsense.  Aeryn had changed into the black singlet she had taken to wearing while on board, leaving her arms bare.  He never understood why that sight thrilled him so much, but it did its usual job on his brain, and cleared out every plausible explanation in a split second.

“Who might have gotten around what?” she repeated, coming to stand next to him.

“Nothing,” he said, feeling foolish.  “It’s nothing important.”

“All right.”  She let him off the hook, but watched him for a moment before turning back to Pilot.  “Where are we headed, Pilot?”

“Moya’s thermal condensers require extensive maintenance, Aeryn, which will take several arns.  The Ashrei kindly provided the components to complete the repairs.  There is little anyone can do on board while this is being performed, so I have found a planet where you may all spend some time while the DRDs are working.”  Claws manipulated controls, calling up information.  “The planet Jocacea has an ancient monastery on it, which contains a peace memorial dedicated to the actions of a Peacekeeper officer.  I thought you would enjoy it, Aeryn.”

“Pilot!”  Aeryn’s smile held both excitement and appreciation for Pilot’s gesture.  “Thank you.  That’s very kind of you.”

“After this last one, I think a peace memorial will be a nice relaxing change,” John agreed.

“How are you doing?” she asked, sliding under his arm and letting him lean on her a little.  “How long did it take you to get up here?”  They moved together toward the doorway.

“Please.  Only a quarter of an arn.”  Pilot cleared his throat loudly.  “Okay, half an arn.”  The grumbling noise behind them was repeated as they stepped into the corridor.  “Uhhhh, …”  Another huge throat clearing from behind them.  John turned around to look back at Pilot.  “Do you have DRDs following me everywhere?”

“Goodbye, Crichton.”  Pilot depressed a control surface and the door to the Den swung shut.

“It took the best part of an arn,” he admitted to Aeryn as they headed down the corridor.  The bones were healed, but like everyone else on board, his damaged muscles were taking longer to regain their strength.  It was a ship full of walking wounded, everyone moaning and limping as they waited for damaged tissue to regenerate and stamina to return.

“You came all the way up here just to chat with Pilot.”  It was a statement, but it was asking for an answer.

“I was just curious about his home planet.  Nothing important.  And I needed the exercise.”

“Mm hm.”  She let him get away with the evasion again.

John looked at the dark hair next to his shoulder and thought that he might pass out from being that close to her.  She made him toe the line in so many ways, but then, just when he expected a well-justified explosion, she let him off the hook.  “I love you,” he told her.

“I know.”  They moved on together, both limping.  “I love you, too.”  John knew he had actually died in that lake, because he was in heaven.

Another DRD scuttled around the corner, looked the pair over carefully, and zipped out of sight.  The scrutiny broke the moment, and brought John back to the real purpose behind his questions to Pilot.  He’d tried to ignore it when he came back on board, but the niggling question in his mind had finally driven him to the Den.

He turned his mind’s eye inward once more, reviewing the collection of chaotic impressions that constituted his memory of the frantic battle at the bottom of the lake.  The water had been filled with muck, Aeryn’s and his blood, and the inky innards from Thing #1.  He’d been dragged close by the agonizing grip around his legs, the pain blurring his vision as he was yanked up tight against the hulking dark body of Thing #2.  He’d pushed Winona forward and pulled the trigger.  There were only brief flashes of recall, subliminal impressions warped by injury, blood loss, and pain, no single image reliable enough to term a true memory.

Aeryn clutched him more tightly as he staggered, nearly banging into one of Moya’s arching bronze ribs.  “Legs bothering you?”  She pulled him back on course.

“No.  Just not paying attention.”

His mind replayed a dark, arching shell hovering above him as the massive crushing claw smashed his legs into uselessness; heavy chitinous plates protecting the body except for where he’d jammed Winona into the creature’s neck; a tiny jointed limb protruding from the wound seared by D’Argo’s Qualta blade; and a three toed claw swimming out of the dark from his right to strike at him, the dark mottled shell and multiple arms almost completely obscured in the cold swirling water.

John looked back toward the closed door to the Den, and knew that his memory had to be flawed.  It was his mind filling in the unknown portions of the event with pieces from his known past.  That was it, he concluded.  His mind had filled in the missing gaps for him.

That was it.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

His misery leapt the seas, was told and sung in all

Men’s ears:  how Grendel’s hatred began,

How the monster relished his savage war

On the Danes, keeping the bloody feud

Alive, seeking no peace, offering

No truce, accepting no settlement, no price

In gold or land, and paying the living

For one crime only with another.  No one

Waited for reparation from his plundering claws:

That shadow of death hunted in the darkness,

Stalked Hrothgar’s warriors, old

And young, lying in waiting, hidden

In mist, invisibly following them from the edge

Of the marsh, always there, unseen.

So mankind’s enemy continued his crimes,

Killing as often as he could, coming

Alone bloodthirsty and horrible.

Excerpt from “Beowulf”

Author Unknown

circa 600 A.D.